


4 x 3

by Remioromen



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, NBA, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:23:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 24,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Remioromen/pseuds/Remioromen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The times and troubles of two friends and rivals, played out on three continents, across several oceans, between two cities, and over ten years as part of the National Basketball Association.</p>
<p>Kagami x Aomine</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once More

**Author's Note:**

> Any errors concerning locations, peoples, dates, rules, and organizations are my own, either unintentional or intentional for the sake of pace and story.
> 
> Team standings, future successes and failures, and rosters are based on my own indulgence and preference, rather than current analytics or projections.
> 
> While absolutely a story about pairings and penises, we're settling in for a long haul. My apologies in advance for the wait, though I hope it'll be worth it in the end.

"Jackie Wilde, investigative reporter."

"Jackie Wilde, investigative journalist."

"Jackie Wilde, investigative blogger."

"Jackie Wilde…blogger."

It had a poor ring to it.  It wasn’t completely wrong, not when the big leap from running blogs for fun became a short form, buzzword frenzy to fight for views and likes.  A career was a career and a beat was a beat, but she couldn’t remember the last time she wrote a compound sentence.  Wilde wasn’t even her real last name.

But she owed Des a favor and he honestly shouldn’t have been at the sports desk with a leg full of pins and his surgeon on speed dial in the first place.  _This is why you shouldn’t go skiing_ , she’d said, even as she’d taken the notepad full of dates and times he’d handed her.  He’d brushed her off, way too involved with his “tip”: an old-fashioned kind of tip, from an inside source and everything.

 _“Friend of mine is a handler for the Bulls_ ,” he’d said, using his huge, shit-eating grin to chew excitedly on the end of his third pen.  _“No. 11’s been on a media hiatus since the Finals.  No interviews, no pictures, nadda.  He only just got back into the country last week.”_

_“Des…this is Detroit.  Who cares?”_

_“He’s here.”_

_“So?  Maybe he wants to go someplace where no one wants his autograph.”_

_“No way.  He’s meeting someone.”_

Juicy-sounding, sure, if this was L.A. and they both worked for TMZ and hounded any vague celebrity for gossip bait.  It’d been decades since the Chicago and Detroit rivalry had been a thing and sports reporting in this area had been a dead horse almost as long.  But Des still had a job in spite of that, and he had a tip, and she had a free morning.  Economic turnaround was hard to report on when the independent business you’d lined up to interview had gone under; her column on its failure was already on the editing desk.  Why not help the invalid out?

It wasn’t a bad lead, either.  She was a hockey fan and even she’d heard about the waves this kid had made, especially from her grandfather, who’d been hollering about him since May.  He was fun to talk about, an All-American story except for that dual-citizenship detail: a rookie star fresh off a championship.  Going back a couple months in the Google news search results and she was bombarded with every trendy nickname the media could slap onto him.  There were a lot of variations on “The Second Coming” and “The Heir of Air” and, most of all, “The Tiger”, which just gave her flashbacks to cereal commercials.

“Could the Tiger play alongside Bugs Bunny in a Japanimation-style _Space Jam 3_?”

Reading that particularly lurid headline aloud in the relative quiet of the Matthaei Center made it sound twice as ridiculous and really drove the point home on just how much time she was maybe wasting.  Not that the kid hadn’t been big news: he’d just been big news three months ago.  The latest headlines were nostalgia-grabbing fluff and stat sheets for the start of the basketball pre-season, meaning this “scoop” she was chasing would be kind of like a fun fart at the end of the real meal.

“Least it means you and me are square, Des,” she said to the bleachers and her fellow “students”, peppered here and there with their own bags, laptops, and ennui.  She’d made an effort to blend in with the menagerie with her tablet and her media pass, but so far all she had to show for it was a pair of coaches with clipboards and a WSU staffer wheeling in a few carts full of basketballs.

When he finally did show up, she would have thought “The Tiger” was just another student.

He had the collegiate uniform: shorts, wife-beater, cap, basketball shoes.  A beaten gym bag.  He was huge, but a kind of huge you could comprehend, wide shoulders and all.  In the photos and highlights from his games, he even looked small compared to some of the men on other teams.  His personal info said he was 6’6”; her brother was 6’4”.  She could handle big guys.

The other guy…she didn’t know.  He hadn’t been in any of the pictures, videos, or interviews.  He was taller, lankier.  He wore a Pistons cap.

The Tiger left his bag by the bench; Cap waited for him, hands in his pockets.  Cap had a slouching tension about him, the kind Trent would get when he had something to ask Dad but couldn’t just spit it out.  The two of them didn’t even talk, just went from the bench to the center of the court, walking side by side, eyes down, or ahead.  Jackie sat up as they did, and leaned forward, her thumb diligently flipping her tablet screen over to the photo app.  This would be clunky, but it was better than noticeably digging through her purse for her camera.

A minute went by.  Two.  They looked at the floor, at the hoop, at the cart, at the coaches that were suddenly much more into their clipboard discussion than they had been a minute ago: anywhere but at each other.

Jackie took her first picture right as the Tiger opened his mouth and said something – in Japanese.

_…Des, you son of a bitch._

She’d had her suspicions, yeah: the dual-citizenship was for the US and Japan.  But what did he expect her to do, translate on the fly?  Once a year was how often she called her grandmother, who was so hard of hearing by now that it didn’t matter that she mangled her words sometimes.  Still, once the Tiger started talking, that stark expression of his changed, turned emotional and charged.  He rounded on Cap and his hands were loose fists, his shoulders up and tight.

Cap didn’t move.  He wore a scowl and didn’t look up.  The Tiger stopped, spit out one more syllable, and reached out, taking Cap by the wrist.

Most of what he’d said so far had been too quick.  This part, said with deliberate force, she picked up:

_Once more._

Or, maybe, _one more time._

Cap flinched and jerked his chin up.  There was a heartbeat’s worth of silence, the tension drawn tight as a wire, and then Cap slumped.  He said something too low for her to hear and shook the Tiger off.  He nodded toward the cart full of basketballs.

 _Okay_ , he said after that, in a different tone, with a different expression.  _Once more._

 

* * *

 

_ Once More: Will a High School Rivalry Usher in a New Era of Classic Contention? _

_There was an interesting sight at the recently renovated Wayne State Athletic Complex last Saturday, a popular training destination for the 2nd and 3rd unit players of the Detroit Pistons –_

_\-- which was, at the time, an unprecedented upset, even in the burgeoning history of Japanese basketball.  It was in the first round of the Winter Cup that these two rivals met for a second time in a match that still gets traction in --_

_\-- just two months ago, when Kagami’s breakout performance during the seven game series against the Los Angeles Clippers earned the Windy City its first championship in twenty-five years.  To top off what sports fans and media alike are calling “The Second Coming”, Kagami’s efforts earned him a place in the record books as both the second rookie in the history of the game to earn the Bill Russell NBA Finals MVP Award and as the second youngest, losing out to Magic Johnson by twelve days --_

_\-- but will the astounding high school successes translate to a successful NBA career?  Drafted 58 th in the second round, Aomine’s limited game time, off-court troubles, and the record-setting technical he received during his first minute of professional play, put into question his future in US basketball, especially after his rookie contract was waived by the Miami Heat --_

_\-- except for these two, this court was no different than the high school one back home.  ‘It was a perfect game,’ one of the WSU coaching staff in attendance said of their one-on-one after the two pros had called it a draw. ‘If you could play a perfect game with just two people, they played it.’_

_‘I wish I could see it, just one more time.’_

_By Desmond Watkins, ft. Jackie Wilde_


	2. The Truth

“Pancakes!”

_Clang clang clang BANG BANG BANG._

“Pancakes!!”

 _Clang clan—_ crash, skit, and there went a fork, banged right out of his grip and lost under the table a second later.  A muffled _“Fuck’n’shit”_ went up from under the table a moment later.  A collective gasp sprung from two girls and one boy, ages three, six, and eight, followed by a “Bad word, daddy!” from the trio of chairs across from him.  Caden Carlisle, the thirty-two year-old Chicago Bulls shooting guard, accepted the scolding from his oldest daughter with a grumbled _“Yeah, yeah, okay.”_

As he did so, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, that his houseguest was grinning.

 He pursed his lips, leaned forward on his elbow, and pointed his recovered fork at the back of his head. “You keep on smirkin’ like that and I’ll be the one makin' the pancakes next time.”

The unified groan from his kids said it all: his threat had weight.  Without turning around, the chef hoisted up his arms like he was being held at gunpoint.

“No!  No, I want to live.”  So said His Airness II, TK, the Tiger, the Bulls’ new starting forward and rising star, Taiga Kagami.  He kept both hands up until Caden blew air out his nose in an exaggerated snort of victory.

“You’re gonna burn our breakfast.”

“Breakfast is done!”

A cheer rose up, Caden rolled his eyes, and Taiga maneuvered around the kitchen island to the table with an armful of flapjacks.  They were, like they had been for the past week, perfect.  Taiga was the only person he knew, personally and professionally, that could make perfect pancakes.  They even came in shapes, from Angry Birds to Batman to basketballs.  Those earned Taiga a brow, but he just shrugged it off and made the trip back for the syrup.

The kids loved it, though.  Most kids loved him: even before the Finals, Nike had been sending Taiga’s agent photographs of proposed sneakers for kids.  Even if Taiga’s haggard texts hadn’t swayed him in the first place, he still would’ve let him occupy the guest room for a weekend or two while the kids were over and Taiga’s dad and agent were hunting up another apartment.

Camp was done for the summer, the preseason was about to start, and the media attention would've gotten ugly again even without that trip to Detroit.  So far it wasn’t as bad as it could be, he thought, but hell, Chicago had been hungry for glory since before he joined the team and there were three generations worth of fans waiting for a superstar.  The only reason Taiga could be here at all was because no one expected him to be here.  Carlisle was out for another month, and that was if physical therapy stayed on track.

Was he sore about it?  Yeah, course he was sore, he wanted on the hardwood, not on his damn couch, but it might’ve been personal a year or more ago, before his injury and the necessity of Taiga stepping in and stepping up; before the Playoffs, before the Finals, before the championship where no one gave two shits that their MVP wasn’t old enough to drink; before DRose had said in that early, famous quote after the controversial draft pick that put Taiga on the Bulls’ roster:

_“Don’t care where he’s from.  This kid’s the truth.”_

“Juice?” Carlisle was asked by someone that had his head in the fridge.

He snorted and pushed back his chair. “I can get my own damn juice.” 

He pulled up next to him and looked down at a head full of red hair that reminded him of playing against Rolo during his rookie days.  When asked about getting it cut, his answer had been _“Sometime.”_ When asked about going into the season as a starter, he’d gone _“I will do my best.”_ When prodded about his trip to Detroit, just the one time a couple of days after that article had hit the Detroit Free Press, all Caden had gotten out of him was a cagey _“Just went to see a friend.”_

The “friend” was Pistons backup forward Daiki Aomine, an underwhelming rookie best known for giving a ref the finger on national television forty seconds after he’d been put into play.  He hadn’t earned a second that game, but the fine and the backlash had limited him to five games that season with the Heat and never against any teams projected to make the playoffs.  If Caden hadn’t bothered to look him up, he wouldn’t have known his name; he couldn't even remember seeing him on the bench last year.

Six pancakes and two glasses of juice later, the kids were gone, loaded up in the back of their mother’s SUV.  That left Caden with just his teammate, packed up and ready for the road tomorrow and for the first game of the preseason.  How did he want to spend his last day before the start of his second year with the Bulls?

Like he had started his first one: watching Caden take shots, only this time it was in his backyard instead of at the team gym.

Taiga was shit on the outside.  The front office knew it, Coach Hammon knew it, the GM knew it, everybody on the roster knew it, and by now, every other team knew it.  It was in the lane or in the paint or it was a missed field goal, a weakness that the Clippers hadn’t had the time or the talent to exploit, not with Kagami’s late entrance to the playoff lineup and their own shaky wing offense.  Twitter was getting its shit on already about how this didn’t jive with all the MJ comparisons; “Chuck II” and “The Short, Asian Dwight” were showing up on his feed this morning.

They didn’t know what Caden knew.  They weren’t there for the 60 hours of shooting practice in the gym over the summer, or all the evenings outside of it.  They didn’t have that eagle-eyed stare drillin’ into their back before, and then after lunch, and then as the sun went down and the moths and June bugs came out.  They didn’t know that by then, long after he and Caden had switched spots, Taiga still didn’t look satisfied.

He hadn’t had any plan to ask.  Taiga was the one that spoke up first.

“My friend – you know.  Detroit?”

“Yeah?”

“He never miss.”

“What?  Bullshit.”

Taiga shook his head and surprised the shit out of Caden by actually cracking a smile.  The kid rarely smiled: he was serious during practice, serious on the court, and so damn nervous during interviews that he could’ve passed for one of those wooden roadside Indians.  But there he was, looking down at the ball with a smile that turned into a grin, and then into excitement as he went on.

“Like – here.  Behind the backboard?  Like this.”

He jogged up, turned, and tossed the ball over the metal board.  It spun in a sloppy arc, bounced off the rim, and hit the cement.

“That.  He can do it.”

Caden leaned forward in his lawn chair to scoop the ball up as it rolled toward him. “Sure, yeah, guys do circus shit like that in practice.”

Taiga shook his head, that big heap of red swishing around like a mop. “In a game.  He can.”

“T, that’s luck – “

“No.  When he wants to.”

The height of Caden’s eyebrows and his skeptical lip face – so called by his son – must not have gone over well with his teammate.  He scowled, those big shoulders of his tight, and then he dug around in his pocket and pulled out his phone.

“He’s here.”

“ _Here_ , here?” Caden had to ask, kind of speechless. “What the hell for?”

“Visiting.”

 _Visiting who_ he was ready to ask, but Taiga kept going before he could. “He’ll show you.”

It was after eight on a weekday.  Taiga was getting on a plane and Caden had an appointment with his trainer and a team doctor first thing in the morning.  And for Daiki Aomine, there was probably going to be a five hour drive back to Detroit at some point.

But what the hell was that new quote going around now…?

_I wish I could see it._

Caden laughed once and threw Kagami the ball. “Fuck, sure.”

What was he supposed to say, no?

“Tell ‘im to come over.”

 

* * *

 

 **C. Carlisle** _@ CCbulls21_ • 3hr

Spent evening shooting w/ **@TK11** and **@DAIMINE** _#nba #team #rookies_

 

 **C. Carlisle** _@ CCbulls21_ • 3hr

These guys are the Truth. _#thetruth_


	3. Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to Ed Lacerte for assigning him another child.
> 
> Apologies to the real people being mentioned alongside fictional anime guys.
> 
> Apologies to the universe for excessive ball. This is a pairing fic, I swear.

“How many minutes do you think he’s got, Ted?”

Ted Lacerte flipped the end of his checkered tie up and down a couple times.  He was staring down their bench, past the score table, and to the visitor’s bench.  Both benches were currently deserted; anyone that could was fleeing to the parts of the Amway Center that still had air conditioning.  Most of the sparse Sunday game attendance had gone with them, dropping by half and unlikely to come back once the game started up again.  One of the announcing team was already calling it the “Spurs Curse” proving that he was forgetful _and_ an idiot, even if the record-breaking December heatwaves this year weren’t discriminating between San Antonio or Orlando.

They were the Magic, not the Spurs, because if they were the goddamn Spurs, they might not have been having this trouble.

“You ever been to Tokyo in July?”

Dumars, a kerchief over his badly sweating face, grunted rudely at him.  But then, Orlando’s head coach grunted rudely at everyone.

“I’m here for an assessment, not more of your vacation stories.”

Ted laughed, and his faced laughed, but he was damn serious.

“It’s like a sauna with a wool suit on.  They’ve been cooking themselves with a UHI effect since the sixties.”

“What?”

“Urban heat island.”

Dumars grunted.

“Elevation and precipitation are the same, too.”

“Fuuuucck.”

Ted laughed, but his face didn’t, this time. “He was down in Miami as a rookie and he’s only been in Detroit for half a year.  He’ll have gas the rest of the game.”

Dumars didn’t grunt.  He stood up instead, wiped his face, and marched back to the locker room.  When halftime was over, he was back and at the score table: the Magic had a roster change, 9 and 1 for 21 and 3.

_Haha, Dumars, you smart POS._

Ted didn’t have to listen too closely to the hard and slow play outlines that Dumars grunted out within the huddle of their returning, wound-up players.  Smith and Ivanov both outweighed the Piston’s No. 5 by forty pounds or more, and had three and five inches on him, respectively.  They weren’t as fast as he was, but if the second quarter had shown them anything, only Perry could follow him and that was if he sacrificed his handling at the same time.

Dumars sat back down.  The kerchief, freshly soaked in ice water, was draped on top of his baldpate.

“You going to catch him at the post?  Smith doesn’t have the footwork.”

Dumars grunted.

“But we just need three seconds.”

Dumars grunted again and crossed his arms.

In the third quarter, Aomine only scored four points.  What was left of the wilted Orlando crowd began to come alive again and the announcing team began to flirt with the idea of a turnaround.  Ted had been giving his old friend some shit there at the start, but he always gave him shit and, more than that, he knew the approach was solid.  He’d seen the same tapes, pulled up the same info, made the same conclusions, and as much as watching high school games gave him flashbacks to Wake Forest, some core issues in Aomine’s game had been pretty clear.

Big men.  Every time, it was big men.  One game in particular had stood out, some interschool competition during his last year of high school.  UCLA’s current scouting mistake, a lumbering, McGee-esque center with his damn hair always in his face, had been throwing out serious, since-vanished hustle inside the paint during a match versus Aomine’s offensive-focused team: Tooho – Tuoho? – hadn’t had a defensive answer.  As the third unfolded and Ivanov in particular sat, immovable, at the low post, Ted saw a nearly identical scene unfold, play after play.

First, somewhere just outside of the three point line, Aomine would receive the ball.  Despite how hard he stuck to a PF style of play, they had him at 3 instead of 4; Daiki was the only one that didn’t seem to have caught the memo.

Second, he would always go inside; like his buddy on the Bulls, No. 5 wasn’t an outside shooter.

Third, he’d gun down the lane, Perry on his heels, and Smith would turn in on him.  Aomine would spin out of the double team on a dribble that even Ted had to admit was goddamn beautiful, and yank the ball in close to his body to prep for his shooting form.

But, fourth, Ivanov would swing in, long arms out, and two things would happen: Aomine would have enough time for the shot, which Ivanov would knock back down, or the ref would call for a three second violation.  He didn’t have the vertical to get over Ivanov, he didn’t have the body to deal with Smith when that didn’t work, and he didn’t pass.  Nine minutes into the third, he started to, but his passes were late and telegraphed by his hesitation.  Not his forte, just like three pointers weren’t his forte, but this was the goddamn NBA, not high school.

By the start of the fourth, Aomine’s focus was noticeably unraveling.  Another failed charge turned into an offensive foul and the winded, heavily-sweating forward started to unload on the ref.  Dumars sat back in his chair, grunting in approval, but Ted caught motion out of the corner of his eye.

The Pistons head coach was storming off the visitor’s bench, making a beeline for the knot of officials and players.  He opened his mouth.  When he shouted, everyone at the 100 block and under heard it.

_“Shut the fuck up, Daiki!”_

If he had been mic’d up, that probably would’ve been a fine and for a second, it looked like it might’ve been a fight, too.  Aomine, stunned for all of two seconds, rounded on him, fists balled, face lit, and everyone on either bench, Ted included, was waiting for it.  The kid had the same temper and attitude now as he did back in school; even just this season, there’d been hints of it almost every game.  It was what had gotten him kicked from the Heat and it was, going by how the ref was already raising his whistle, what was going to get him kicked from this game.

But it went nowhere.  It was ten seconds, tops, and then he backed up a step and his whole body language came down, tension washing out in a rush.  He looked at his coach, drew his head and his shoulders straight again, and gave him a small, square-jawed nod.  His coach, severe in a black suit – still had the jacket and everything, didn’t Paul ever sweat anymore? – waited, eyes hard and chin up, until Aomine wiped his face with the neck of his jersey and headed back in for the huddle.

Ted whistled. “We’re in for some trouble.”

Dumars only scowled.

\---

_ Beating the Holiday Heat: Magic vs Pistons _

_Santa’s come early to the Detroit area as yet another win begins to bolster the hopes for a playoff showing, the first in fifteen years --_

_\-- but after starting forward Ray McQuillin had to be carried off the floor at the end of the first quarter due to severe dehydration, it was head coach Chris Paul who made the decision to bring Aomine off the bench in what was a risky move --_

_\-- until the Pistons’ run in the fourth, which carried them to a 98 – 86 victory over the Orlando Magic, proved that even a simmering, swampy Christmas season couldn’t slow Aomine’s momentum.  Despite a season-high number of turnovers, Daiki led the Pistons in scoring, while Alenko kept up with the rebounds at --_

_\-- in his post-game interview, Magic Assistant Coach and Head Athletic Trainer Ted Lacerte had this to say:_

_‘I’ll tell you what, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a 21 year-old toss up a fadeaway like that and actually make it.’_

_‘We’ve got a lot to watch out for as the season goes on.’_

_Magic head coach Hugh Dumars declined to comment._

_By Desmond Watkins_


	4. Alex

Two seconds after Kagami opened his door, she felt every ounce of worry lift off her chest.  Right away, she was unashamedly glad that she had jumped on the chance to take an earlier flight to surprise him, because even though he had put on twenty pounds of muscle and three inches since she last saw him, that open, boyish surprise was exactly like she remembered it.  She beamed at him, so relieved and happy that she broke her promise to herself that she would at least wait until they were inside before she hugged him.

“Taiga, I missed you so much…!”

“Wa – No – Alex-!!”

He never had a chance.  Being bigger than ever just meant that there was more of him to tackle, though she couldn’t get her arms all the way around his shoulders anymore.  She settled for looping her arms around his neck for her hug instead, though he didn’t have to look so panicked: when she swooped in for a kiss, it was a peck on the cheek instead.

“How have you been!”

Hunkered over in his doorway – the alternative would’ve been to stand up, which would have had the chance to lift her right off his front steps – Kagami went through his routine of opening his mouth to say something, closing it again, and then eventually getting around to a response, scratching at his cheek at the same time.

“Uh…good.”

Alex leaned back and her smile was just kind enough and just wry enough to get him to squirm a little.

“Just good?”

He frowned and looked off to the side, obviously caught, and she laughed and let him go with a pat on his shoulder.

“It’s okay.  It’s okay!  Let’s go inside.”

She let him go and he let out a grateful puff of air, one that immediately drifted away in a cloud of white to disappear into the gray sky.  Alex shivered in her coat and hurried in when he stepped aside, then sighed in a different kind of relief when he shut the door.  She had always had a hard time when these Great Lakes winters, though she had come prepared: she peeled off a coat, a sweater, and two ski caps once Kagami shut the door.  She expected his noise of surprise before he made it and was already ready to wave him off with a wiggle of her fingers.

“I got it cut.  Do you like it?”

“I…uh, yeah.  Yes.  It’s nice.”

“Thank you!”

Free of cumbersome clothing, she rounded on him again, hands on her hips.

“Are you going to show me your new place or not?”

Another set of wide eyes, another surprised noise, and then, finally, she got a smile out of him.  Like the rest of him, this had changed some, too: it was as big as ever, but it came more slowly, more thoughtfully.  She could only guess at how hard he’d been thinking recently and how often and how much by himself.  She knew he liked to spend time with the Bulls’ team captain, but that was half of the reason she’d made the trip from L.A. to Chicago in the middle of February in the first place.

But, first, she got a tour, one that began in a bare entryway, went up through empty second floor bedrooms, a first floor master cluttered with boxes, and an immaculate, well-stocked kitchen, and then ended in a Spartan living room with a single leather couch, a rack full of basketball books and magazines, and a flatscreen with the stickers still on it.  Outside the picture windows, drifts of snow were stacked up close against the historic Greystone exterior that Kagami probably didn’t think about, much less admire.  His address was close to the Bulls training complex; she didn’t need three guesses to know that that was the one and only reason he picked it.

On the TV stand was a stack of mail.  Most of the envelopes had logos in place of return addresses.

“Tea?  Alex?”

She jumped slightly, hastily pulled her attention back to her former student, and offered up another smile.

“Please.  I’d forgotten how miserable the winters are here.”

When he disappeared into the kitchen, she glanced at his mail again, definitely tempted.  It felt like only yesterday that she, his father, his high school coach and _her_ father, and his entire high school team, from rookies to retirees taking time off from exams, college, and careers, had packed themselves into Kagami’s Tokyo apartment in order to rip through his stacks of mail.  She remembered that Riko had lunged in early and claimed the NBA Commissioner’s letter for herself; Kagami’s father, still in a dress shirt and tie, had stared down the room until he’d been handed the stack of responses from potential agents; and Alex herself had let the others _Oooohh_ and _Aaaahhh_ over the dozens of letters from her old friends, teammates, and general managers, each one offering congratulations or words of advice for her protégé.

The Holy Grail, though, and the partner to the Commissioner’s envelope, was the stamped invitation to the floor of Madison Square Garden, addressed to Kagami and dated for the upcoming NBA draft.

Kuroko had been the one to hold it up and read it aloud.  They’d cheered, loud enough that there’d been complaints from his neighbors the next morning.

In the background, Taiga had been waving his arms and trying to yell over the bedlam.

_“What?  What!  I can’t hear!  I can’t see-!!”_

The memory was a warm one, and filled her, even though it didn't quite fill the quiet, spacious sitting room.

Alex didn’t have to think on it very long to know what she wanted to do about it.

When Taiga came back, a mug in each hand, he got to make another croak of surprise, this time just outside of the hallway, because not only had Alex found herself the remote to the TV and the remote to the surrounded sound, she had also found the pantry, a very large bag of popcorn, and a blanket, because the snow was coming down thicker than ever.

On top of all of that, she had found the only basketball game on TV: Detroit vs Dallas, where the weather was much better and the American Airlines Center was more packed than usual.

“Come on, come on!” She said excitedly, waving him over. “They just started the second quarter.”

Kagami gave her another smile and this one, this time?  There wasn't any delay where he had to think about it.  It burst onto his face, rich and wide, and he hustled to the couch, careful only when handing her a mug.  He learned forward to watch, his own cup between his big hands, and Alex felt like she could safely put away the returning vestiges of her worry for the rest of the evening.  Before she left, they could have their talk, but until then –

“Look, _look!_ That bastard!” Kagami laughed, hands fisted on his knees, attention rapt on his television.  It was clear he expected the play right before it happened.

Onscreen, No. 5 got a running start toward the inside, dribbling off his left hand, and then, when the first defender collapsed in toward him, halted on his toes, stepped back, up, and lifted into a midrange fadeaway.  The ball sailed over Jamil Wilson’s fingertips.

Alex watched, her breath still in her throat, and groaned at the same time that Kagami did when the ball crashed against the rim.  The Pistons got the rebound, but not without a struggle, and though Alenko smashed his catch back in for a bucket, it was clear that the game winner hadn’t been decided yet.  The Mavericks had a brilliantly strong core this year, one of the toughest teams coming out of the historically brutal West, and they were giving the Pistons offense precious little time to make their shots.  They were quick, and Wilson had gone straight up for his block, expertly avoiding a foul on the much less experienced scorer.

The Pistons lost, 102 – 91.  Even so, Taiga was animated by the end of it, one arm draped over the back of the couch but nothing else about him even remotely casual.

Alex knew that look.  She knew that thrumming, enthusiastic tension.  She elbowed him, matching his smile.

“Play against him again yet?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.  I want to.  He’s gotten way better.  Did you see, in the fourth, the steal…?”

She laughed, and lifted up her chin taking another smug swig from her mug. “I did.  You’ll have to be careful when you go up against him.”

 _When_ , she said, like it was certain.  She wanted it to be.  She knew that it wasn’t.

From how Kagami paused before he answered, he knew it, too.

“Yeah.  I will be.”

 

* * *

 

 **Jackie_Wilde** _@ freep:buzz_ •12m

 **@chicagobulls** Reports guard and captain Caden Carlisle out for season with dislocated knee.  Confirmed as complication of last year’s ACL injury. _#bulls #chicago #nba_

 

 **Jackie_Wilde** _@ freep:buzz_ • 12m

Sources indicate Bulls FO will likely rest playoff hopes solely on Taiga Kagami’s shoulders. _#bulls #chicago #nba_


	5. Love, Jackie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some gays!
> 
> Not a lot, though, gomen. :(

First lesson learned: don’t attend All-Star Weekend in crutches.

Second lesson learned: _do_ attend All-Star Weekend in a wheelchair, once it becomes abundantly clear that crutches aren’t going to work, but we have a wheelchair in the medical office if you need it, sir…?

The Detroit Free Press had bought their usual seats, the “Fanzone” ones all the way up with the bats and the bell-ringers, but they’d had to, due to certain unavoidable physical needs, request handicap-accessible seating in an arena that had been reduced to resale tickets since last June. Not only did they get them, but the stadium staff had coughed up their usual handicap spots to an extra row of cameras without checking that they’d been filled. As a result, there had been a heck of a lot of apologizing and moving in a hurry when Jack had rolled him up to the press stand.

Add in a couple little fibs to grease the wheel(s) – it was really six pins, not nine, and he was really fifty, not sixty – and that was how big, burly, bearded Canadian transplant Desmond Watkins got one of the best seats in the house, right in that spacious cup behind the scorer’s table, for what was going to be a hell of an All-Star Weekend, the last time anyone, anywhere, would get to sit back, take a break, and do something fun, before the final grind toward the playoffs began.  The tension was already getting out of hand, especially because the hopeful defending champions had to struggle with the huge hole in their leadership and in their offense that their captain had left behind, while the Heat, the Hornets, and the Pistons were clawing through every game in a bid for the 7th and 8th seed in the East.  As for the West, the Mavs were out of control, with the Spurs and the Blazers hot on their heels.

But!  But, before all that, he was here for one thing: the Rising Stars Challenge.

Team USA had the slight betting edge this year, mainly through the presence of the Mavericks' up and coming PG, a wily kid out of Kentucky who was being mentored by their already dangerous veteran playmaker, but everyone, _everyone_ , including him, had their eyes on Team World. Alenko, Ivanov, Jacoby, and of course, Kagami and Aomine, made for one of the most exciting crops of fresh international talent in the last five years. No one, not even the most casual of fans, would count Team World out before the game even started. True true, it was an exhibition with no competitive weight in the regular season where no one ever bothered to play defense, but for once, he couldn't give a fig about that.

He couldn’t wait. Gosh dang, but he couldn’t wait…!

Des was a fan. He was a big, big fan. He’d gleefully and unashamedly prodded and encouraged and all but dragged Jack into his world, a move that she had called “evil” and “underhanded” and “anti-Canadian”, considering he was doing it to a hockey devotee. But no amount of calling him a witch or smacking him with file folders could reverse the process: not when she was off getting courtside interviews that he wouldn’t have been able to do, otherwise.

Or so she had been, up until he spotted her all but sprinting out of the knot of handlers, cameramen, reporters, and staff at a speed that shouldn’t have been possible for a woman wearing heels that high.

Des was already flipping the breaks off on his wheels before she made it up to him. “What? Something up? Fill me in, Jack!”

“On the way. Get your shit up. _Come on._ ”

Unlike some old farts, he didn’t question her. He just reached down, hauled up their combined bags – two laptops, one tablet, cameras, papers, pens – up onto his lap. Jack lunged in behind him, leaned against the back of his chair like a star offensive lineman, and used him as a battering ram to wedge through mic assistants, PR photographers, those plebes from the Chicago Tribune, a half-dozen kids who had won a national contest – _“Hey kids, who’re you excited to see?” “You almost ran us over!”_ – and a bewildered, then surly, pair of security guards that Jack waylaid before they could even tell them that there was no entry.

“The other handicapped bathroom bust a pipe,” she told them, straight as rail behind him, her hands white-knuckled around the grips of his chair. She wasn’t even panting from all that running. “You can call it in.”

Neither of them looked like they wanted to. They were already using their bodies and a closed, waist-high gate to keep press and peepers out of the locker rooms.  A couple more reporters were about as welcome as the fresh, rank sewage that must have been filling a bathroom on the other side of the complex for real, because the one on the right actually pulled out a walkie-talkie to grumble into it.

_“Facilities, that pipe been patched yet?”_

_“No. City contractor needs another half hour.”_

Desmond did his best to look violently constipated.

_“Roger. Thanks.”_

A minute later, every electronic device on their person had been confiscated, hopefully temporarily, and they were hustling down the bare cement hallway of the arena’s sprawling back-of-house. Desmond opened his mouth, but Jack beat him to the punch.

“Tigger pulled him in here. I think he wanted to talk to him alone.”

 _Tigger_ – Taiga Kagami, that was what she called him.

“Or they’re going to the locker room to prep for the game,” he pointed out, playing devil’s advocate even as his excitement made his heart skip. He knew that without their things, or actual leave to be here, they weren’t sneaking into restricted areas for a Big Scoop, because people with actual careers and common sense didn’t do that (unless they were with TMZ).

This was something _fans_ did. “Jack, the odds are pretty dang low that we’ll get anything other than banned from – ”

“Look! Look, there.”

He looked. The long stretch of hallway in front of them was painted cement on the right; on the left, there were the wide glass walls of the media rooms. They were empty, drained out as everyone migrated courtside, which by itself was probably the only reason they weren’t being escorted, because what was there to see and who was there to bother when everyone else was already gone? Their lights had been dimmed and, presumably, their doors locked, but as Jack slowed down and pushed him gradually past, he saw that two people were in the last, near the door on the far side.

They were both in warm-ups: one in red, one in blue. Aomine was the taller one, but he was leaner, with a bigger wingspan, whip-like but precise on the court. Kagami was the stockier one, shorter but wider, with a shorter reach but an explosiveness that he could aim in any direction, forward, up, heck, even down, sometimes. Standing together, the dichotomy was glaring, and almost storybook, but these were real people they were looking at, and, realistically, they weren’t going to do anything worth remembering as Jack approached, and then started to pass them.

Realistically - but so far, with these two, there had been nothing but surprises.

They were close, talking animatedly, their voices just loud enough to make muffled sound through the glass. Kagami was the one that moved first, a sharp half-step, and his arm moved, briefly, out of Desmond's line of sight. Aomine’s shoulders dipped as if he’d been pulled. Now their voices dropped off the register, and Jack and Des were abreast of them, and Aomine was saying something –

On a hunch, Desmond’s gaze dipped down.

“Whoa, hey, are they - ?”

Desmond drew his shoulders together, first in tight surprise, and then in sudden determination.

“Keep going.”

“But – “

“Just keep going, Jackie.”

The handles on the wheelchair squeaked some when she tightened her grip. He knew that she wanted to ask, but he’d already looked ahead again. He was going to get an earful, probably after the game and during the drive to the airport, whenever they had a moment where they were absolutely alone, but for now, she let it go, and wouldn’t you know it, there was even a handicap and family bathroom at the other end of the hall, presumably for family members and injured players. They could hang out a minute or two, long enough to realistically fake their fake, and then make it back to their seats before the game started.

But…heck.

He was going to get an earful.

 

* * *

 

 **Jacklyn Murata** _< capjack@yandex.com>_

Okay, Des, okay. You’ve convinced me.

Tell David I said hi and that he’s way more evil then you are. You’re both witches.

Love

Jackie

P.S. If the office gets tickets to Sydney, you owe me one.


	6. No

“You…whaaaaaaaat?!”

On the laptop screen, Aomine rubbed the back of his head and mumbled something she couldn’t hear.  Satsuki puffed her cheeks out and felt, for a moment, sixteen years old again.

“Dai-chan!”

Aomine winced and said it again, loud enough to be heard through her headset this time.

“I got another fine.”

“ _Uuuuuugggh._ ”

Satsuki flopped back onto her bed, her wrist draped over her forehead. She was still in her pajamas and the soft, pearly pink dawn light was just beginning to peek out from under her closed curtains.  It didn’t do much to light the dim interior of her small apartment, not with everything else closed up tight in the hopes of getting a little more sleep before class started.  She had three hours and she didn’t regret getting up so early, not all that much, not really.  This was the best time for a call: late for him, early for her, but not the middle of the night for either of them.

But – while she didn’t regret it, she was definitely thinking she should have gotten just one more hour of sleep.

“How much?”

Aomine cleared his throat, pursed his lips, flopped his arms over the back of his chair, and then, when he was out of ways to stall, finally answered.

“Twenty-five thousand.”

Satsuki snapped back up so fast that her hair flipped over into her face.  She carelessly shoved it back out of her eyes so she could lean forward, grab the sides of her laptop screen, and glare into the camera built into the top of it.

“DAI-CHAN!”

Aomine winced a second time and held his hands up, as if expecting her to leap through his monitor and beat him to death with it.  And honestly if she could have, she _would_ have.  Aomine’s first real season playing enough games to actually matter, even going so far as entering the starting lineup for several, and he was still… _still!_

She snapped, just a little.  She didn’t use to snap.  She didn’t start to until she and Aomine had begun to spend much more time apart, when she couldn't be so occupied with his big, troublesome self right in front of her.

“You know better!” She scolded, and though she knew she was shouting, her face red and her hair mussed, she didn’t stop.  She sat up straight again, her hands on her hips, and felt her anger bubble up. “You’re not in school anymore!  You’re not a kid!  You can’t just do these things when you get mad and not think about what will happen!  You’ve got to - ”

 _Grow up_ , she started to say, but didn’t get to.

“I know!  I know, damnit!”

Satsuki jumped, startled, one hand held close against the flower print of her top.  It took her a few seconds to realize that he had cursed: the word had been in English.

Aomine recovered before she did.  That hot, furious stare wavered, and then quickly faded. His closed fist loosened, and then pulled back from where it had pounded on his desk, to eventually drop and hang off the side of his chair.  His shoulders slumped and he looked down, breathing slowly and, if she listened close to catch it, shakily.

“…sorry, Satsuki. I’m sorry.”

No one made him apologize, this time.  Tetsu didn’t have to tell him to; Wakamatsu didn’t have to punch him.

This, at least, had started to change.  She’d been noticing that, too, now that they were apart, the differences between then and now, him and her.  Satsuki waited a moment, let it sink in, let it matter, and then let out a soft sigh and folded her hands in her lap.

“I’m sorry, too." She said, quietly and diplomatically, looking at him in the face. "Neither of us will yell, next time, and neither of us will have to apologize.”

“Yeah.”

It was quiet for a little while then and she let it be, because she wasn’t in school – well, grade school – anymore, either.  _You shouldn’t have to take care of him anymore,_ she reminded herself, with clear firmness, in her own head and her own voice, though the words belonged to someone else.  Tetsu had told them to her, not long after Aomine’s plane had disappeared out of sight, holding one of her hands while she used the other to wipe at her tears.

 _He has to take care of himself._ “But you don’t need me to tell you that, right?”

He’d tugged on her arm, encouraging her to look up at him again.

 _We should trust him._ “Since you know already.”

There was a moment more of silence, and then a short, small laugh and Aomine leaned back in his chair with a nod and an easy _“Yeah, yeah.”_   Looking at him, she was struck again by how much bigger he was.  He’d been nineteen when he had left, with plenty of more growing still to do, but even with the projections that she had made, she had had him at 198 centimeters, maybe 200.  He was past that now, especially whenever he had shoes on; he was just barely tall enough to be a traditional PF – but they weren’t playing him at 4.

She was about to suggest that he buy another chair when he surprised her by continuing.

“Coach…he kicked my ass for that one.”

Aomine said “ass” in English.  Satsuki blinked, then smiled, and let her expression soften at last.  She tucked her hair behind her ear and leaned forward on her elbows to listen.

“It won’t happen again.  I need to stay in.  We’re going to the playoffs.”

She knew. Everyone they’d ever played with or met or was even vaguely acquainted with knew.  And she knew, as well, that if there was any reason for him to be losing his temper more, it’d be that.  She made a soft _mmm_ sound and laced her fingers together.

“It’s not going to be easy, Dai-chan.  You’re still having a lot of trouble on the outside.  Midorin isn’t there to make things easy for everyone anymore.”

Aomine grumbled, but didn’t disagree.

“You should trust No. 30 more.  His percentage from the three point line is the best on your team.  If you worked together with him more in the wing you’d pull pressure away from the inside.”

Aomine then scowled, but it was a fun look, his lower lip jutted out, his brow furrowed. “He calls me a kid and won’t stop rubbing my fucking head.”

He said “fucking” in English.  Satsuki laughed.

“You still are, a little bit!” She said, because even though she had yelled at him, it was still true.  For small while yet, it’d still be true. “And that’s what you get for cutting your hair so short.”

There was another grumble, and then Aomine reached up to rub at his head with both hands.  She only laughed harder.

“No, no, it looks nice!  Kagamin got his cut short, too.”

 _Kagami_.  If there would ever be a name to get Aomine to take notice, it was that one. His expression changed and after a quick pause, he asked in a different tone of voice:

“Hey, Satsuki, his team…do you think they’ll make it?”

Her smile faded some.  She looked down at her hands.  She’d been following all the news, watching all the games, and she knew Aomine had to have been, too.  He knew basketball as well as, or better, than she did and he had to have had the same thoughts that she did.  He didn’t need to ask her.

But she knew why he did. He wouldn’t let himself accept it unless someone else said something first. He’d always been like that when it came to things he didn’t want to hear.

“No.”

 

* * *

 

THE CHICAGO BULLS HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENTION

_In what is a devastating blow to the city of Chicago, the Bulls have lost to the Brooklyn Nets in the Eastern Conference Semifinals --_

_\-- never recovered from the loss of guard Caden Carlisle, who anchored the Bulls throughout last year’s playoffs only to suffer a torn ACL during the conference finals, and who prematurely ended this season with --_

_\-- never seen anyone look so exhausted,’ said former Bulls center and forward Pau Gasol, who was in attendance. ‘Not for a long time.’_

_After suffering a hamstring sprain in game 2, Taiga Kagami returned for games 5, 6, and 7, but despite what is being called a Herculean effort --_

_\-- with the Bulls’ elimination, Brooklyn will face the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals._

_The first game of the Western Conference Finals will feature the Dallas Mavericks versus the San Antonio Spurs on Monday._

_The NBA Finals will be held on June 4th._

_By Desmond Watkins_


	7. Not For Anything

His throat hurt.  His eyes hurt.  His chest hurt.  His hands even hurt, aching from how hard he was clenching them into fists.  Everything hurt, like he had hiked over a mountain or run a marathon, and he wasn't even the one playing.

Kagami wished that he was, though.  He would have given anything.

_“ – and Paul calls for a timeout!  That’s the last one for Detroit!”_

His heart in his throat, Kagami dropped back into his chair and heard, but didn't really feel, Alex slap him on the shoulder.  She said something to him, maybe something about what the next – and last – play could be, or that they were definitely going to win, or she was telling him how much she liked penguins.  He didn’t know.  He wasn't paying attention.

He was watching Aomine.

He had been watching Aomine for almost a month, through fourteen games in three different arenas in three different states against two different teams.  Since the Bulls had been eliminated, that was all that he had been doing: watching Aomine and the Pistons struggle through brutal match after brutal match.  The Eastern Conference Finals had gone to seven games, each one ending with the score for each team within four points of one another, two of which had been in overtime.  The Nets had dominated during the first two; the Pistons had rallied for the next three, bolstered by the rock-solid defense of their big Australian center, Ken Alenko.  They’d faltered badly in Game 6, behind Brooklyn in every quarter and eventually losing in overtime.  Game 7 was already called a miracle; a triumph of Chris Paul’s coaching and last-minute roster changes – Aomine among them – that had earned them the silver trophy.

The ECF was a distant memory now.  Kagami couldn't even remember what seats they’d had.

Worse than the ones they had now, maybe; Alex and his agent had worked some kind of magic to get them, just one row up from the floor but on the side opposite the team benches.  Kagami could hear the rim shake when the ball went through it.  He could hear, but not quite make out, the Piston’s coach as he spoke in the middle of the tight knot of his worn, wired players.

The back of the No. 5 jersey was facing Kagami.  This close, he could see Aomine’s shoulders move as he panted and, if he squinted, just make out the sweat as it rolled down the back of his neck.  The part where his hands were shaking as he adjusted his shorts was probably something that Kagami just imagined, or so he would have thought if he didn't remember doing that exact thing as he'd sat, slumped forward in his bench seat, during those final seconds of his own Game 7, too exhausted to stand for their final play.

“They're going to make it.”

Kagami lurched in his chair, nearly startled out of his sweats, but Alex was ready for that.  Her grip on his shoulder was hard, holding him steady.  She looked him dead in the eye, her face close and framed by the short fringe of her hair.

“They’re going to make it, Taiga.”

He swallowed heavily, and while he couldn’t relax, he could nod. “Yeah.  They are.  They will.”

No one, not the media, not the organization, not the fans, and maybe not even the Pistons themselves, had believed at the start of the Finals that they would make it this far.  The Mavericks had been the clear favorite to win since the start of the playoffs and had taken the WCF in five games against the Spurs after blowing out Portland in just four in the semifinals.  In comparison, the Pistons had been run ragged in 6 and 7 game series since the start of the postseason, rotating through a hodgepodge roster of old veterans, roleplayers, and young and untested blood.

_“Aaaaand time’s up!  With eight seconds on the clock and a two point difference – ”_

The announcing was lost in the noise that rolled through the Palace, lifting all the way up to the beams and the lights as the last lineup took the floor: Alenko, Daly, Copeland, Williams, and Aomine.

Kagami had meant to stay seated.  He didn’t; he rocked forward, perched just on the edge of it, and for the eighth time that night, jabbed the person in front of him with his knees.

_“Copeland’s inbounding the ball, Daly’s on point but Dane’s right on him, he’s been on him this whole game – ”_

The Mavs had a phenomenal wing defense.  Their PG, Justin Dane, had won MVP for the season.  He had height, and control, and he was fast, and he was planted between Daly and the basket, anticipating a pass.  Daly had just enough time, _maybe_ , to make a play for one of his teammates; he was the most experienced out of the lineup, but that made him the oldest, and too slow to drive past the younger Dane.  He would make a pass.  He needed to –

The crowd screamed.  Kagami banged his knees forward, didn’t even hear the _“The fuck, buddy?!”_ he got as a result because he was staring, his heart racing, at the court, at the white numbers on colored jerseys as they charged across the hardwood.

_“It’s Williams with the screen – no, Dane’s around him, he’s too fast!”_

Dane's arm cut across Daly’s line of vision, but it didn’t matter, he wasn’t passing to Alenko for a surefire dunk that would tie the game and take it into overtime.  His pass went out, no look, to the left corner outside of the three point line.

Aomine caught it, right up against his body.  The crowd howled, so loud it made Kagami’s head pound.

_“Aomine with the shot - !”_

There wasn’t, though.  There wasn’t a shot.  Kagami was staring at him, hardly blinking, hardly breathing, and he saw it, saw the waver and the decision.  He knew it when Aomine knew it: he wouldn’t make it.  He wouldn’t make that shot if he took it.  His hands were shaking.  He was tired.  He wouldn’t make it.

Aomine slashed inward.  He drove toward the basket, head down, his dribble tight and left-handed.

_“They see him, Walton’s got him at the post…!!”_

The fans behind Kagami were swearing, pounding on their legs.  Anger surged, charged with disbelief, because why didn’t he make the shot, what the fuck was he thinking?!

Kagami was barely breathing.  He remembered game after game back home.  He remembered the look on Aomine’s face when he was certain about something, when his eyes would narrow and sparks would fly in them and he would _make_ it certain.  Of all the people that Kagami played against, Aomine was the only one that could do that; even Akashi had needed something to happen first.

But Aomine –

He sprinted right under, then past, the basket.  The defense collapsed on him, chased him almost out to the opposite corner.  He didn’t look at the clock; like Kagami, he had to be counting in his head.

From full speed, he came to a full stop, protecting the ball with his body as he spun himself first one way, and then the other in a sharp fake.  The entire Palace seemed to shake as thousands of chairs and feet ground against the concrete, people standing, jumping, howling -

A bounce pass rocketed through the legs of Mavericks center George-Piers.

_“That pass…!”_

The Pistons’ No. 30, Ty Williams, was open.  His defender had joined the pursuit and was caught in the right corner with Aomine while Williams waited, perched at the point.

Williams caught the ball and lifted into an elegant, easy three point shot.

Milliseconds after it left his fingers, the buzzer sounded.

The rim hummed, the ball bounced off the floor and into Alenko’s waiting hands, and the scoreboard flashed from _109 – 111_ to _112 – 111._

The whole world moved.  The floor, the crowd, the lights, it all just _surged_ , and Kagami was caught up in it.  He leaped up at the same time, pumped his arms up, and then grabbed for Alex and spun her around as the cheers roared so loudly that they weren’t even individual noises anymore, just a single, triumphant, trumpeting sound that blasted against his body.

_“They did it!  They did it!!  The Detroit Pistons are your NBA Champions-!!!”_

On the floor, the Pistons bench emptied, spilling out players and staff that converged on the players on the court while blue and white confetti rained down from the ceiling.  Rows of people slammed into Aomine’s back and flung their arms around him, carrying him in their wave as they coursed toward where Williams stood, staring at the basket.  He turned just in time to keep from getting knocked over and then, jubilant, shocked, locked an arm around Aomine’s neck and ground his palm against the top of his head, laughing.

Aomine laughed, too.  He smiled.  He smiled, and he jumped, and he pounded his fist into the air.  He looked the happiest that Kagami had ever seen him.

It struck him hard, like a rock-solid fist right into his chest.

There was a lot he wished he could change about this year, a lot of things he wished hadn’t happened.  But, looking at Aomine right then…

He wouldn’t change this outcome.  Not for anything.

 

* * *

 

_ THE LARRY O’BRIEN TROPHY RETURNS TO MOTOR CITY AFTER 20 YEARS _

_After the world said it couldn’t be done, the Detroit Pistons have conquered one of their most difficult seasons in recent memory to come out on top as the best basketball team in the world --_

_\-- when asked about his game-winning shot, Finals MVP and Detroit native Ty Williams laid the play’s entire success on two people: Coach Chris Paul and forward Daiki Aomine._

_‘They’d been riding Daly all game,’ Williams said during his post-game interview. ‘We needed a look from somewhere else.’_

_They definitely got it.  Aomine’s show-stopping assist has put him on the radar of every team of the league --_

_\-- on everyone’s mind is “Where do we go from here?”_

_The answer is an easy one: the Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, where Detroit’s own Ken Alenko has already announced he will be playing with his Aussie brothers._

_Will Aomine do the same for Team Japan?_

_By Desmond Watkins_


	8. Sydney, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to my good friend thural. :)

“This is the first time in almost fifty years that Japan has participated in the Olympic basketball games.  Has there been any increased pressure on you and your teammates because of that?”

“Ehhhhh?  I didn’t know about that.”

“…yes, the last year Team Japan passed the qualifying rounds was in 1976.  Do you feel that – ”

“Mmmm, that’s a long time.”

“ – _do you feel that_ the fifty year gap and your teammates’ successes put a lot of pressure on you as the only amateur participant?”

Murasakibara’s thin brows pinched together.  In his pocket, his large fingers curled together a bit more tightly, crinkling the folded pamphlet for _La Renaissance Patisserie & Café_ that he had picked up when he’d landed at Sydney Airport.  He’d been holding on to it for a week, thumbing through it whenever he had time to sit during the training sessions (he hated those) or when the star center of the Ukrainian women’s basketball team, Olena, was snoring quietly against his naked shoulder (he hated that much less).

At the moment, he was adding another thing to the list of people, events, times, weather patterns, and foods that he hated.

“I don’t care about that.”

The reporter, likely sensing weakness and likely already annoyed by the half hour he’d so far wasted trying to talk to him, pressed his advantage.  There was a TMZ logo on his ID card.

“Two of your teammates already have an NBA Championship each and the other participated in the FIBA World Cup when he was only twenty.  And two of them used to be a classmates of yours, didn’t they?”

“I’m not thinking about that – ”

“Do you intend to attend UCLA another two years before declaring yourself eligible for the NBA draft?”

Murasakibara’s lips screwed down into a cantankerous frown.  The reporter lunged for the jugular.

“Does your delay have anything to do with UCLA’s failure to place in any collegiate competition since you were scouted in – ”

Murasakibara started walking.  He walked right past the annoying little man in his plaid t-shirt and socks with sandals.  When he shouted and started to give chase, Murasakibara widened his stride.  While he was an easy mark to spot in the thick crowds of people enjoying the balmy, pleasant, late summer weather, the reporter couldn’t keep abreast of him and ask questions at the same time.  Eventually, the looming, slightly stooped, 7’2” college player and only amateur on Team Japan’s starting lineup disappeared around a corner, khaki shorts, Bermuda hat, and pink Hawaiian shirt and all.

Fifteen minutes later, Murasakibara was squeezed into a seat on the northbound, 2 PM train to Circular Quay.  It was a long tip from the Olympic Village to The Rocks, but being in the Team Japan rooms all day on their days off was annoying, and besides –

He pulled the pamphlet back out and began to scan the brightly colored, if wrinkled, pictures.  He slowly flipped through the page and a half of macarons and placed each one in a precise order in his head.

 _Rosewater, Pistachio and Cherry, Strawberry, Jasmine Green Tea, Passionfruit Milk Chocolate_ –

“Murasakibara!”

He flinched and tore the page in his hand.

“It’s been a long time!”

He looked up, and then up a little higher, until the rim of his hat and the long fall of his bangs were finally out of his face.

Shaggy brown hair.  Big brown brows.  A big, open face.

A Bermuda hat.

Murasakibara didn’t say hello.  He didn’t say anything, only clutched at his torn pamphlet.  Behind Kiyoshi Teppei, his gaggle of friends didn’t look as happy, comfortable, or casual as he did.  He remembered some of them, though none of their names: the glasses guy had a tick in the corner of one eye; the sporty girl next to him still wasn’t as pretty as his own coach in high school had been, though she was taller than she used to be, which was nice; the rest were interchangeable and forgettable, though the little dog one had inexplicably sprouted, chasing after Kiyoshi’s height –

Kiyoshi slapped his hand down on Murasakibara’s shoulder.  A startled, tight, surly, cantankerous stare flashed up to his face.  There was a big, friendly smile there, though his eyes were open – they closed a lot when he smiled, he’d noticed years ago – and they had a _look_ in them.  It was a look he didn’t like.

“It’s been five years, hasn’t it?  You’re here for Team Japan, right?  We saw your name on the roster.”

That look got worse.

“Do you want to come with us?  We’re about to have lunch.  We could catch up.”

The train slid to a smooth stop.  They were two stations away from his destination.

Murasakibara stood up.  He noticed that Kiyoshi hadn’t gotten any taller; he was almost a head above him.

“I’m meeting someone.”

He started walking.  He walked right past Kiyoshi’s cheerful _“Next time, then!  Good luck, Murasakibara!”_ and hunched his shoulders against Kiyoshi’s irritatingly sincere _“We’ll be cheering for you!”_ until the doors closed behind him.

There was a bus he could take the rest of the way.  He worked his way through the station conjestion, planted himself under a tall tree out next to the street, and dug in his canvas bag for his phone to check the time.  He took the opportunity to stuff his hat in his bag, as well.

“Ooohhhhh, oh, young man!  My boy!  You’re Atsushi Murasakibara, aren’t you?”

Murasakibara made a cantankerous noise and glared over his shoulder.  A burly, wide man with a bushy Christmas beard was right behind him.  He had crutches under each arm.  A woman in shorts and high heels was sprinting up behind him, yelling something about _“We’re going to miss our train!”_ and _“You’re going to break your other leg!”_ , but Christmas Beard didn’t seem to hear her.  He just kept talking, rushing through slightly accented but perfect English.

It annoyed Murasakibara a little that he could understand him.

“I’m Desmond Watkins with the Detroit Free Press!  Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about you and your teammates?”

Murasakibara started walking very quickly.  Then he started jogging.  He jogged until he reached the next bus station down and looked before he took a seat to make sure he did not recognize a single face among the passengers.

A half hour later, he was standing in front of _La Renaissance Patisserie & Café_, his pamphlet in one hand, his bag in the other.  The elegant wooden sign on the door said:

_Bakery and Lunch Café: 11 – 2 PM_

_Dinner Café: 5 PM_

A second sign said, in neat script:

 _Closed_.

 

* * *

 

 **Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 1d

Just saw **@ucla** player Atsushi Murasakibara at St. James Station!  Hope to see good things from him this year! _#sydney #ucla #olympicgames_

 

 **Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 2m

Saw **@ucla** center Murasakibara hiking, yes HIKING, from Olympic Village to The Rocks this morning!  That’s dedication!   _#sydney #ucla #olympicgames #extremetraining_


	9. Sydney, Part 2

“Aomine-kun, you’re back on the bench.  Kagami-kun, you’re in at 4.”

Aomine’s nails bit into his palms.  There it was again: _-kun_ , each and every time, garbage minutes, and a staunch refusal to even _look_ at him as he made the roster change.  Coach Ida just kept staring at his clipboard, moving his mechanical pencil up and down it in short, unhurried scratches, looking exactly the same now as he did at the start of training camp: short, seventy, balding, and a goddamn _relic._

In his head, the curse was in English.

Aomine didn’t care about any of the accolades and successes and “longest tenure for a coach in the JBA” or that Ida was going to an announced retirement in a year’s time, though that was most of the problem.  His approach to basketball – the “sport of ball”, that was how he always said it – was older than he was, pulled up from ancient, string-bound playbooks and tapes from the 1970s.

It was driving him crazy.

_It was driving him fucking crazy._

It had already cost them the gold medal.  The Australian and US teams would be competing for gold and silver tonight; right now, mid-afternoon and in the half-full, outdoor court previously used for the preliminaries, Team Japan was facing Team Argentina.  They were down by nine after Aomine had gone on an 11 – 0 run, finally closing the gap, except Coach Ida had switched him out again after only four minutes – always with Kagami, they hadn’t even played together this entire time – and shuffled around some of the others.

It was that mentality in particular that was ruining everything.  Ida had even said it in his fucking pre-game speech: _“We’ve come this far.  You all will represent Japan on this stage of nations.  Remember that, and conduct yourselves with the respect and humility expected of upright young men.”_

He hadn’t said a damn thing about winning.

Staring down at Coach Ida’s diminutive figure in his neat, pressed suit – sweat dotted his almost-bare head, a side effect of the tepid, late afternoon heat – Aomine felt his temper prick and flare.  It rose up through his gut, into his chest and shoulders, and started to blossom on his face as his jaw tightened and his lips pulled back.  He took a breath –

_Shut the fuck up, Daiki!_

Aomine’s whole body twitched.

_Just sit your ass down!_

Coach Paul swore at three things: bad passes, easily avoidable backcourt violations, and small forward Aomine Daiki.  From the moment he had stepped off the bus at the team athletics facility in Detroit to the moment he’d left summer training to join the Olympics, Coach Paul had been swearing at him.  He swore at him when he found out that Aomine didn’t do a full warm-up routine; he swore at him until he was in the gym every day, an hour a day; and now, he swore and yelled at him until he made at least 100 three-pointers at each practice session.

He was the first coach he’d had anywhere that yelled; even Coach Dumars, back when he’d been with the Heat, would dismissively sit and glower and wear people down with stares, which had only worn down on Aomine's nerves that much quicker.  In contrast, Coach Paul was why Aomine knew so many English swear words; he was why he went to bed sore, his ears ringing with admonishments, plays, and instructions, each one more difficult than the last.

Coach Paul was also why he had a championship ring safely tucked into his bag in his room at the Olympic Village.

Aomine sat down.

Next to him, a towel over his shoulders, FIBA star and shooting guard, Tatsuya Himuro, turned a mild eye his way.

“He doesn’t like you or Taiga,” he said in an equally mild tone.  It was the first real thing he’d said to Aomine that wasn’t just a greeting or chitchat.  They weren’t exactly friends, and Aomine had been in a foul mood since he’d first realized just how determined Coach Ida was to sabotage their chances at victory. “He doesn’t like Western-style basketball.”

Aomine’s lip curled. “We’re going to lose.”

“Probably.”

Aomine’s hot stare darted to the side and locked onto Himuro’s own.  He felt an insult leap up his throat, something nasty like _“You know about that kind of thing, don’t you?”_ , but he caught it before it got away from him.  He bit it down and looked again and saw, this time, how hard Himuro’s fingers were digging into the ends of his towel.

Then he looked at the court.

Murasakibara stood, winded, at the post.  Ida hated Western-style basketball, but Atsushi wasn’t a pro and was, undeniably, their only option at 5.  In fact, he’d been the only one at 5 this entire tournament and before it was half over, Aomine had realized that Murasakibara’s stamina was worse than Alenko’s despite Alenko being seven years older than him.  It was maybe even worse than when they’d last played together, which meant that the long, uninterrupted minutes of the last several games, especially, were taking their toll on him.

Kagami’s job then became to provide more support at the rim.  And he did, on fresh legs and with a fierce, fiery determination that made Aomine’s heart pang, but being in the paint left a man on Argentina unmarked.  Their offense immediately went on a fierce attack, launching passes that Team Japan couldn’t keep up with in what was, Aomine recognized, some serious irony.

It was Kagami’s expression that did it.  The tight, unhappy frustration, the moment of painful, obvious failure when a shot went off uncontested, and then the next moment, when he’d set his big shoulders again and keep trying, because that was the kind of person that he was.

Aomine’s chest hurt.  His molars pressed together so hard that they ached.

“Hey.”

Himuro looked up; he’d been staring silently, blank-faced, at his trembling fists.

“What is it?”

“He’ll probably put us in for the last two minutes no matter what the score is.” That had been Coach Ida’s method so far: neat, sorted spotlights on this stage of nations. “It’ll be his last timeout.”

Himuro’s expression started to change, first to detached surprise, and then to something sharper, more dangerous, and more subtle.

“Get me the ball,” Aomine finished, looking straight ahead again, at the scoreboard and at Kagami’s back. “I don’t care how you do it, just get me the ball.”

With no other timeouts to call, there would be no more roster changes; whatever happened in the last two minutes of the game would be set in stone.

Himuro’s smile was small and deceptively calm, and he sounded like quite the upright young man when he answered.

“I’ll do my best.”

 

* * *

 

 **Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 5m

Team Japan **@JBA** takes the bronze medal!  Congratulations to our friends in the Far East! _#sydney #teamjapan #olympicgames_

 

 **Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 5m

Detroit’s own Daiki Aomine **@DAIMINE** with a 13 – 0 run in the last minute!  Hell of a game! _#sydney #pistons #olympicgames #champ_


	10. Sydney, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mature warning for this chapter! ;)

Olena Tsukorenko could imagine the carpeted halls of the Olympic Village dorm complex as rivers of silver to match the medal around her neck.  Here and there branches would split off into sitting areas and rooms, each one a bright, energetic island occupied with a myriad of colors matching all the flags of the world, full of the smell of food and beautiful people, all perfume and sweat and musk, and, of course, the glitter of cans, bottles, flasks, and, in one case, a keg resplendent in Deutschland hues, and why not?  The last medal ceremony was over and, by tomorrow, the exodus would begin and the fairytale would be over.

It was possible that the absinthe that Team Ukraine had shared was coloring her thoughts, unless you knew her, in which case you would know that it wasn’t _at all._

She was on her way to a room she’d become very familiar with in the last several weeks, determined to soothe and comfort, and to challenge and tease.  She had a mind to see how high, exactly, her hair would bounce against the wall as they fucked against it like wild animals, or if they could surpass her previous Olympic record, and break six beds instead of five.  Atsushi, she knew, had a mind to feel good, and a tenacious, tireless need to bowl over opposition, real or implied, and she wondered if he would come on her symbol of victory if she placed his glorious penis between her breasts.

She was delighted, then, to see that the door was minutely ajar when she arrived.  She thought for a moment to drop her bag and simply stride into the room, but she remembered at the last second that there were his teammates to consider.  They were themselves were very attractive young men, but less approachable than Atsushi had been, more preoccupied and with more apparent care for their troubles.

She had watched their games, right through to the last, and been pleased to know that they’d overcome their hurdles to the best of their abilities.  They were owed congratulation as well, if just the more polite kind.

She paused long enough to smooth back the strands of her hair and lower her bag to one arm before lightly knocking on the door and announcing herself in accented but passable English, the only language they all shared some vague ability in.

“Hello, this is Olena.  May I come in?”

There was no answer.

There were, however, muffled sounds, which she heard when she leaned in close to the door for a second knock, concern knitting a neat crease between her brows.

A muffled voice, first.

A faint, faint slide of fabric.

A creak of metal bed springs, a quick, sharp thump of a headboard against the wall, another voice, louder –

Olena didn’t knock a second time.  Instead, she covered her widely smiling mouth with one hand.

Her friends would always tell anyone that would listen that she was a cheat and an imp, shameless in her perversions, and beastly in her play in their chosen sport.  She would, if present, absolutely agree with everything that they said.  She was all these things, and more, exactly the kind of person that would bite her lower lip and, very carefully, ease the door open just enough to squeeze inside, and then, with equal care, shut it back again.

Her bag, she left by the door, along with her big sandals.  The room layout was simple, hotel-like in its efficiency: an entry hall, a half-kitchen, a second hall for the bathroom facilities, and then a wide space for a sitting area.  Across from the sitting area were a row of closed double-doors, each one leading to a room with two beds, one for each team member.  Of the six, five were open, and empty, with various levels of neatness or disarray.

The last, the sixth, was partially closed.

Outside of it was a pile of belongings, a pair of upturned gym bags, discarded shoes, a jersey with the number five on it, and a large, empty bottle of excessively expensive champagne.  Two identical bottles were on the dressing table next to the room; a fourth, the only one unopened, was next to her feet in the hall.

She looked, naturally. No person in their right mind would do otherwise.

Olena caught them in the middle of what had to be a long, dogged, intensely focused sexual marathon, if the numerous, discarded condom packs were anything to go by.  They even had a line of them up on the bed with them, and one currently in use, shiny with lubricant as it was driven, time and again, into the muscular, dusky-skinned buttocks of the taller of the two of them.  He was the one currently straddling the other, the gorgeous sweep of his back dipping in a rich curve as he drove his hips downward, into the waiting hands and heavy cock of his teammate; of his clothing, only a shooting sleeve remained.  His arms were up and behind his head, his fingers curled tightly in his own short, dark hair, ostensibly for balance but also, she suspected, simply for lewdness, as he was the one making the most noise: thick, brazen moans spilled out from his throat every time his ass crashed down, flush against his partner’s groin.  It was his voice that she had heard, back at the door, and it was his voice she heard again now, the word finally, acutely clear, sharp and high with arousal:

_“Kagami – ”_

On the bed, the other – he had just a jersey to his name, though it had been shoved up well past his flushed nipples - made a shocked, strangled sound, and she knew exactly why: the perfect globes of that busy backside had clutched together, cinching up tight.  It drove him to buck up wildly, both of their bodies bouncing up on the mattress, and there was the sharp noise of the headboard smacking against the wall as a result.  Another pillow slid to the floor, jostled off the mattress by all the motion, and that was the soft fabric sound she had heard, as well. When they dropped back down, the mattress gave a creaky, metallic protest, and she acknowledged that, perhaps, she wouldn’t be the only one breaking a bed this year.

When they landed, the taller one dropped the furthest, laying his body across his partner so that he could move his fingers to his hair instead, sliding them through the sweat-darkened red locks that clung to his forehead.  He moved his weight forward, onto his elbows, and the motion lifted his ass up enough that it released a quarter or so of the cock that had previously filled it, tip to stem, which drew a new, harsher noise from the mouth of its owner.

_“Ao…mine…”_

The next was in Japanese, and probably an oath of some kind, because it came with a guttural growl and the movement of wonderfully muscular arms.  Big hands took his leaner bedmate by the hips, lifted him up higher, and higher still, until the bulbous, swollen head of his dick widened the pink rim of the other’s hole, and then slammed him back down again.  Then again, and then again, until it was clear the feverish, merciless pace had a clear purpose to it, one that the partner, gasping against his neck and leaving clear nail marks on his shoulders, would not be able to escape.

Through the relentless upward drive of his hips and the generous, fervent kisses that he used to catch his partner’s ragged gasps, he achieved his purpose: his partner’s back locked in quivering tightness, from his lean shoulders all the way down to his stunning thighs, every magnificent muscle standing out under sweat-slick skin.  Olena heard, rather than saw, the moment when he was pushed to orgasm, the pitch of his breath and his moan needy and adorably high.  She could, however, imagine the thick, white ropes he shot across his teammate’s belly and, maybe, somewhat up onto his chest.

She left them, then, aware that taking a moment to clean one another up would likely mean they would notice their voyeur at the door.  While she had certainly been enjoying herself, Olena knew a wholly personal moment when she saw one.  She did move the last champagne bottle next to the door for them and, with great care, close the door to their room the rest of the way.  When she returned to her bag, a faint vibration alerted her to a phone message, which she left until she was back into the hall and closing that door, as well, with the same kind of care.

It was from Hanna, to let her know that Atsushi had arrived at their rooms and was looking for her in particular, though she had best hurry, lest they snatch him away from her.

With a smile, she sent back a clear warning, full of dire consequences, and then set off, striding quickly and happily down the rivers of silver.

 

* * *

 

**Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 1hr

And that’s all folks! The teams are heading home, and so are we. _#sydney #teamusa #olympicgames_

 

**Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 1hr

Congrats to Team USA for taking gold, but who’s ready for the next season? I know I am! _#pistons #ballislife #repeat_


	11. Your Team

Caden was never big on suits.  Tuxedos, sure, those had some real class, serious _007_ shit, and a person could make a case for a nice blazer if it was put together real well, but a straight up monkey suit would always be a monkey suit.  No thanks.  The courtside dress code for non-participating players had rubbed him the wrong way for a long time because of that, and while he’d heard talk that the current commissioner was leaning toward loosening it up some, that didn’t help him all that much right now.

This kind of press conference would always call for a suit anyway.  You couldn’t just show up in sweats.

If there’d been anything he could’ve done, on Heaven or on Earth, to not be here, he wouldn’t have been here, sitting in front of his mainly-empty locker with its one hanging jersey in an empty Bulls locker room.  Someone on staff must’ve been keeping everyone else out, maybe outta respect?  Caden wished they hadn’t.  Felt like a fucking wake.

There was the body, all dolled up in its dark blue suit.  There was the jersey, a hanging epitaph for the departed.  It didn’t matter that the deceased wasn’t quite dead yet.

He'd be in the ground, and soon, and nothing could change that.

“Carlisle…?”

Caden looked up from where he held his hands, over his knees and with his fingers laced together.  A smile came out of nowhere, slow and lopsided, but still a smile.

“How many times have I told you, Taiga?”

He stood, and almost didn’t feel the harsh pang from his knee.

“It’s just Caden, goddamn.”

His teammate scratched at his cheek and then said, with determined firmness: “Caden.”

“That’s better.”

Taiga scrunched his face with the same kind of embarrassment he’d had since the day he’d been drafted, some two years and change ago.  He’d filled out like crazy, fitting a load of weight and muscle into a 6’6” frame that, looking at him, you wouldn’t think could hit the jumps that he could, at the speed and height that he could.  He was only 22; they’d celebrated his birthday at Caden’s house before he’d left for Sydney.  But he hit every practice with the same kind of hardness and focus as any veteran with years under their belt and went into every game like it was the playoffs instead of a November match against the Nuggets.

There was no telling how far he could go.  Whatever his ceiling was, they had yet to see it.

“Hey, Taiga.  C’mere.  I want to show you something.”

The younger man stopped halfway through opening his mouth; Caden must’ve interrupted him.  Whatever he’d been about to say, though, he let go, and nodded, following Caden when he led him down the row of lockers.  He stopped at the last, the one nearest to the door, and rapped against the painted hardwood with a knuckle.

“It was here.  Back before they remodeled, this was his locker.”

For a moment, a confused frown sat on Taiga’s face, but it wasn’t very long at all before it faded, first into surprise, and then into the awe that Carlisle knew so well.  Everyone made the same face, once they knew.

“I saw you looking for it the first time you came in here.”

Taiga glanced at him, quickly, and there was a bit of color on his face.  Carlisle laughed; he was still a kid, just a bit, but hell, sometimes he felt like a kid, too, when he took the time to remember.  He dropped his hand, and looked at the simple boards and shelves, the seat and the foot rest, the hooks for hangers and gear.  It was empty, but like Taiga, he could imagine the jersey hanging there, the _Jordan, 23_ standing out in stark black and white on red.

“It’s a hell of a thing to live up to,” he said, and laughed, quiet and soft. “By the time I was old enough to be into basketball, he was already a legend.  The whole saga of Jordan was already set in stone.”

“And Pippen.”

Caden looked to his left, a little surprised. “Yeah, and Pippen.  The shadow man.”

It was Taiga’s turn to look surprised and it lasted, this time, like it did for a person that just realized something that, maybe, they should’ve known the whole time.  After a long stretch, he smiled, then grinned, that same slow progression from thoughtful to excited that Caden knew so well.

“I know someone like that.”

“Like Scottie Pippen?”

“Yeah!  …yes, a little,” Taiga quickly amended and backed up onto the clear floor in the center of the room, pantomiming invisible passes. “It was just high school, but he did…you wouldn’t notice it.  People didn’t see it, not enough.  But it made the difference.”

His enthusiasm was infectious.  Caden couldn’t help but grin back at him, arms crossed, and for a second there, the pain from his knee and the pain in his chest actually faded.

“And you were his Jordan?”

Taiga stopped mid-pass and stumbled over his words.

“I…no, I was just – ”

Caden peaked his brows at him.  Taiga stood straight again and closed his eyes, and Caden could swear, he never saw anyone’s cheeks actually get red in real life before he met this kid.

“I guess.”

If there was anything about Taiga that broke the mold for a pro at his level, it would be that.  The media called it humility; guys on other teams, and one or two on their own, called it softness.  It’d come up in talks, many of them nasty, after the end of their playoff run last year and though Coach Hammon had slapped that shit down real quick in their locker room, there was nothing to be done about the opinions of their competition.  He’d have to change it himself, one game at a time.

Caden went up to him and put a hand on his shoulder, waiting until Taiga looked him in the eye.

“It’s gonna be your team now.”

Taiga’s jaw tightened.  Caden saw, first, the draw-back, the surprise and the denial.  Maybe it was because of softness, maybe it was because, like Caden, he hadn’t been ready for this yet.  A few more years, even two; he would have wanted that.  But just one…that was almost asking too much.  He was lucky he had one to give.

“Not Jordan’s team, not Pippen’s team.”

He let him go and walked down the row of lockers, stopping at the second to last, where a different jersey hung, the white-and-black-on-red letters standing out:

_Kagami, 11_

“You get me?”

He turned back toward him and his expression was hard and focused, a game face if he’d ever made one.  Taiga was a good kid with a big heart, and he worked damn hard, and sometimes, when he charged in and jumped for the rim, it was like he was flying.  But he needed more than that, needed to be more than the good kid that knew how to handle a ball, and he needed it within a year.

He needed what Caden had seen in him a year ago, out in his backyard as fireflies dotted the sky, as he’d gone head-to-head with Daiki Aomine as though nothing in the whole world mattered more than that game, in that moment.

It’d been the perfect game.

“It’s your team.”

 

* * *

 

_ Chicago Bulls’ Caden Carlisle Announces Retirement from Professional Basketball _

_Monday night, during a special press conference held at the United Center, guard and captain Caden Carlisle announced that the coming season will be his last –-_

_\-- team doctor has said that a full recovery is possible, Carlisle expressed his desire to step down as the core of the Bulls, both for the good of the team and in consideration of his personal well-being._

_‘My minutes are going to be limited,’ Carlisle explained during the conference. ‘I’ve already worked everything out with coach and the office, I’m just going to be a backup man now –-_

_\-- hasn’t been officially announced, league sources say that this year will be a literal “passing of the torch”, as the Bulls transition from one superstar to another._

_The real question is: is Taiga Kagami ready for it?_

_By Desmond Watkins_


	12. Layup

If there was one thing about Amoine’s game that didn’t get the credit it deserved, it was his gods-damned way with layups.  Coach Paul had been on him to work on his outside skills, which nobody, not even Aomine, was gonna argue with.  After last year’s Finals, when he’d eaten up some of the clock by waffling on whether or not to take a game-winning shot, he’d been hitting the three point line like a man obsessed, starting right  back up where he’d left off once he got back from Sydney.  From straightforward, hour-long, around-the-world drills to gunning in from the opposite goal and then hitting those perfect, trademark breaks of his right at the point for a shot: no angle was being left out of his training regime.

Sure, sure, most of those shots were missing, sometimes as often as eighty percent of the time, but that was why he was in here during off days, game days, and hell, if he could have done drills on the team plane on the way to road games, he would have.  If they got snowed in by next week’s annual New Year's blizzard, he’d probably take shots in his garage.

Or apartment?  He couldn’t remember if Aomine had ever moved out of his shitty rookie digs.

Either way, if anybody had told Ken Alenko a year ago – a year and a half now, actually - that that thin, surly, lazy, big-headed little shit from the Heat was actually going to hit the practice court and the weight room with his whole heart, Alenko woulda laughed right in their face.  He trusted the front office, more or less, and he trusted their GM a little bit more than that, but what the actual fuck were they gonna do with an undersized forward with a weak wing game, shitty passing, and a hair trigger?  The whole signing had been looney; anybody keeping tabs on the oddball Japanese players in that rookie class had been fully expecting Aomine, at least, to fade back into international obscurity.  At least his buddy had learned the game in its home country and from an actual pro.

All Alenko had ever heard about when it came to Aomine was falling short of high school success, and some kiddy tournament in junior high.  Back when he’d stomped his way off the bus, looking like he had the biggest chip on his shoulder and not speaking a word of English, he’d been sure Aomine would spend time sitting on the very end of the bench, chewing on towels and waiting for garbage time or Ray to hurt himself on a drive in order to have actual minutes.

Funny how it’d been his layups that got Alenko to thinking otherwise.

“Heeyyyyyy, Aomine.  You remember there’s a thing called lunch, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s lunchtime.”

“Yeah.”

Alenko laughed and leaned back in the shitty folding chair he’d dragged over to the wall so he could watch.  Most of the guys had already left; coach was having an intent discussion with Ted Lacerte, their new athletic head, flipping through stacks of stapled papers; and there was a runner with a parchment envelope hovering near the exit, obviously and awkwardly waiting for practice to finish.  Alenko didn’t have to ask the poor girl who she was there for, because out of everybody still here, there was only one guy left that didn’t have a US cell number.  Aomine’s agent might as well either come himself, or start sending his messages along via pigeons.

The birds would’ve had to wait, too, though: Aomine was only just starting in on his layups.

That was how he wrapped up every practice: he’d work his way in from the outside, transitioning from the line to midrange, and then getting right up under the rim.  The layup was the most basic shot in the game and, a lot of the time, the least flashy, but Aomine went at them with a quick, fluid ease, all sure steps and smooth throws, that _made_ them worth watching.  He did every type, from anywhere, going from a simple two-step approach to the rim and sinking a ball off the backboard, to taking his step under the basket and floating it, reverse-style, into the net.  He barely looked when he did it, so intimate with the shape of the basket and his distance from it that he knew, every time, just when and how to shoot.

He sank four reverse layups before Alenko whistled and got to his feet, pulling his towel off his neck and leaving it back on his chair.

“Hey, Aomine,” he said, shedding his warm-ups next. “If you’re gonna make your captain late for lunch, then I’m gonna make shit hard for you, too.”

“Captain of my ass.”

Alenko let out a big _Hah!_ as a grin crawled across his face.  He walked up, a solid seven feet of muscle and a tan that wouldn’t quit despite the entire team being holed up for the winter.  He planted himself between Aomine and the basket and saw out of the corner of his eye that Coach Paul was watching.

The prickly bastard; he never missed anything.

To his credit, Aomine didn’t make that offended face like he had during those first team practice sessions; he’d finally, over the last year, gotten it into his thick skull that nobody was out to get him.  They were out to _push_ him and, knowing that, Aomine grinned back, tightening his shoulders and flashing a nasty, promising smirk his way.

He liked it when people pushed him.  He played best, and hardest, when it wasn’t easy, which made him both a great player and a shitty player, because he had to turn that on all the time, not just when he felt like it was worth it.  If he wanted to be a _champion_ , and not just _good_ , he’d have to come at Alenko like nothing in the whole world mattered more than getting a layup past the four-time Defensive Player of the Year.

He tried.  Fuck, but he _tried_ this time.  As soon as Alenko was in position, Aomine was on him, faking a charge only to pivot, the ball on the outside and his arm between himself and Alenko, to try for an overhand toss against the backboard that would've been a hookshot if it'd been further out.

Alenko lifted with him, ignored his arm, and used his reach to knock it out of his hands.  Aomine swore at him and jogged for the ball, then came back, and did the same, except he faked in the other direction and shot with the opposite hand.  It was a perfect mirror image, executed at the same speed, with the same confidence.

Sure, Alenko knocked it back down in the same way, but it was a hell of a thing to see.

This time, he got an enthusiastic _Fuck!_ out of Aomine, who turned back on him with a glint in his eye.  Alenko stopped smiling, because he knew that look – everyone on the team knew that look; you could watch it again on Youtube, if you wanted – and shifted his weight, waiting.

It’d be something crazy.  It was always something crazy –

It was another layup.

There was no fake, not this time.  He ran in, daring Alenko to take his charge, and when Alenko didn’t move, ready to call Aomine on an imaginary foul, Aomine put the brakes on, stopped just short of him – _that_ was a hell of a thing to see, too; he never lost his balance when he stopped – and fooled Alenko into thinking it’d be a jump shot, despite how close to the rim they were.

Instead, he tossed the ball underhanded, moving almost in slow motion in a jarring transition from how fast he’d been going just a second before.  It rolled off the tips of his fingers, spun up in an arc too high for even Alenko to block, especially not when he had so little time to jump, and sailed neatly into the basket.  It didn’t touch the backboard; fuck, it didn’t even touch the _rim._

Now, when he lowered his arms, Aomine was the one who let out a smug, triumphant _hah!_  

“Captain of my _ass_.”

Alenko watched the ball roll out of bounds, and then let out a great, big belly of a laugh and punched Aomine so hard in the shoulder that the smaller man nearly toppled over.

“Shut up, you shit!”

“Fuck your face, King Kong!”

_“Both of you shut the fuck up!”_

Hearing coach add his two cents only made the both of them laugh harder, and Alenko slung an arm around Aomine’s neck and dragged him toward the door.

“Come on, stupid ass, that girl and her letter from Nike have been waiting for twenty minutes.”

 

* * *

 

 **Jackie_Wilde** _@ freep:buzz_ • 4m

Pistons forward Daiki Aomine **@DAIMINE** signs sponsorship with Nike. _#nba #pistons #nike_

 

 **Jackie_Wilde** _@ freep:buzz_ • 4m

Sources say contract totals for $6 million, roughly 8x the value of his rookie contract. _#nba #pistons #nike_


	13. It's Exciting

“Ri-chaaaaaaaaaan!

“Sa-chaaaaaaann!”

Hyuuga had only his quick reflexes and finely-tuned sense of self-preservation to thank for avoiding any kind of bodily harm when he answered the door.  As soon as he opened it, his instincts kicked in, and he engaged a quick, precise sidestep and plastered his back against the wall, channeling his inner halibut in order to keep himself as flat as possible.  He had a second where he didn’t know – couldn’t know – if it would work; he could only pray, the doorknob still in hand and a hot, anxious sweat prickling on the back of his neck.

Momoi’s elbow missed the tip of his nose by millimeters.

_Oh thank you, God of Halibuts._

“It’s so good to see you!”

“You too!  Oho, did Jun-kun do your hair again?  It looks so pretty!”

“Heheh, he’s not bad, is he?”

Hyuuga’s ears prickled.  He coughed, cleared his throat, and shuffled away from the wall to give their guest a short bow.

“Momoi-san, it is very nice to – “

“Junpei, she’s not some old lady!” Riko scoffed and nudged him hard in the ribs with an elbow, which made him briefly doubt the power of the God of Halibuts. “And it’s only been a couple weeks since we went to lunch!”

Hyuuga was a wise enough man not to point out that their greeting ritual wasn’t one a person used for ‘just a couple weeks.’

“…ehem.  Momoi.  Hi.”

Momoi laughed behind her fingers and move to the side so he could shut the door against the steady patters of spring rain.  She shouldered out of her jacket and left it and her shoes behind as she followed them into the remodeled downstairs of Riko’s house.  What had once been a clinic was now a spacious, modern living area; the last of the work had just finished up last month.  Kagetora had moved his things out before then, crying all the way to his new training facility, sponsored by and associated with Tokyo U, some thirty minutes north of this address.  Not even tenure, a beefy salary, and year-round JBA employment could stem his tears.

The house, now, was all Riko’s.  In eleven months, three weeks, and two days, when she graduated from her athletic trainer’s program and when he finished his apprenticeship with his father, it would be –

Well.  She would still have her certification to achieve, and plenty of post-graduate, accredited programs to look at, and he would need a certification of his own and a license-to-operate the business once his dad retired –

“Jun-kun?  Why are you staring off into space like that?”

“A…ah.  …haha!  Who said I was doing that?!” Hyuuga was _sure_ his ears were red. “Momoi, why don’t you sit down?  The others should be here soon.”

He fled then, first into the hall and then into the downstairs office to pick up his laptop.  It took a little work, but they had managed to find a way and a time to watch basketball games live from the U.S. together and not just at home via streams on their own computers.  The schedule had to line up just right: an 8 PM game on a Friday night in Chicago or Detroit would be a 9 AM game in Tokyo.  That happened only a handful of times throughout the season and only once – this game – would the two teams be playing each other.

That was why, in a half-hour’s time, their big living room would be packed with anyone that could come: Tsuchida and his wife had an early appointment with her obstetrician, so they wouldn’t be able to make it until the very end of the game, but no one else had classes and those that worked on the weekend had taken time off for what was turning into a reunion of sorts, not only for the Seirin High School basketball team, but for Touou and most of Shuutoku and Kaijou as well.  He’d even gotten a formal RSVP text from Midorima – declining, of course, but he had the furthest to travel, and the heaviest workload as a premed student.

Thinking of the number of guests on the way, Hyuuga made a quick stop in the kitchen to check timers on the oven and on the stove, and then glance at his phone again to make sure that the pizza would make it on time, too.  It wasn’t like he had regressed and suddenly mistrusted Riko's cooking again – a person didn’t reach top marks in a health and fitness-based program without learning ideal nutrition that was _also_ edible – he just didn’t think that they had enough food in their house to feed that many mouths.

He also had to stop and blush when the thought _their house_ drifted across his mind again.

By the time he made it back to the sitting room, Riko and Momoi where already knee-deep in a discussion about their favorite thing: basketball.

“So you really don’t think they’ll play against each other this match…?”

“Mmm, no.” Momoi tapped her chin with her finger.  “They’ve been testing each other all season.  They know now they’re both going to be in the playoffs.”

Hyuuga, by the big TV stand and with cables in his hands, looked over his shoulder. “They’re going to be the 2nd and 4th seed, aren’t they?”

Momoi nodded. “Kagamin’s been on a mission the whole season.  They don’t have anyone solid as a shooting guard, not after his captain got hurt a second time, but he’s helped them to get that far.”

Riko made an exasperated noise and looked torn between making a pleased face and making an annoyed one. “That idiot’s probably been overworking himself again, like last year.”

“I think so, too,” Momoi said, her small smile shifting into a more serious look. “He’ll lose again if he does.  He needs to trust his teammates.  They traded for Jacoby and Ivanov mid-season, they’re both very good.”

Wiping the dust off his hands, Hyuuga picked up the remote and walked over to the big easy chair, dropping down to join them. “If he knows what’s good for him he will.”

Riko and Momoi both smiled, first at each other, and then at him.  Hyuuga pretended not to notice and just pushed his glasses a little bit further up his nose. “S…o.  So.  You said they won’t play against each other.”

Momoi made an _mm_ sound and nodded a second time.

“Their coaches are both very smart.  They know everything about Kagamin and Dai-chan as players and they know they’ve played with and against each other already.  Winning now won’t be just skill: it will be strategic, too.”

She leaned back, looking at the ceiling, and Hyuuga could almost imagine a clipboard in her hands.

“Their coaches have to outsmart each other.  Who will have the most surprises left by the conference finals?  Who will have the best plays?  They want to keep all their best secrets and special weapons hidden for as long as possible.”

She looked back at them again and Hyuuga could almost swear he saw a devious twinkle in her eye.  It was almost enough to give him flashbacks.

“Until the postseason, they’ll be watching each other very closely, those two in particular.”

She smiled and Hyuuga felt himself start to sweat again.

“It’s very exciting.”

 

* * *

 

_ This Day in History: Twenty-Five Years Since the End of the ‘Bad Boy’ Era and the Waning of the Detroit-Chicago Rivalry, History is Poised to Repeat Itself _

_Much has been said and written of the legendary, and legendarily infamous, rivalry between the 80s era Pistons team, known to all as the ‘Bad Boy’ team, and the early, ascendant Chicago Bulls, led by the then-rising star of Michael Jordan.  Earning their nickname via their gritty, openly physical, and do-anything-to-win style of play, this rough and tough team was coordinated by celebrated coach Chuck Daly into a strategic missile aimed at the Bulls, and at Jordan in particular –-_

_\-- most of the ‘history’ now is anecdotal, and subject to the ravages of nostalgia, one thread remains unbreakable in the long, tangled narrative of the Pistons and the Bulls: Jordan didn’t like Isiah and Isiah didn’t like Jordan, each viewing the other as a heated, and hated, rival._

_Even today, Isiah Thomas, inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 12-time NBA All-Star, and considered one of the top players of all time, is most well-known for his controversial off-court comments, his leadership of a team that peaked on technical fouls during its championship run, and his Dream Team exclusion, reportedly at the behest of Michael Jordan --_

_\-- can’t help but draw comparisons to the rising star of each team._

_On one side: a from-the-gate superstar MVP, an “Heir of Air” assuming a mantle of leadership while also bearing the weight of the eternal question: is he a scorer but not a winner?  Can he repeat, or will the dream die after a single transcendent championship?_

_On the other: a pathway filled with potholes, paved by controversy, and traversed by grit and work and viscous talent, bolstered by a shrewd, elite coach and driven by intense, ongoing rivalry.  The question then is this: will that rivalry raise him to the level of a champion or will it drag him down so much that it will, eventually, leave him in the dust as the Bulls once again outpace the Pistons on their path to greatness --_

_\-- taking all that into consideration, exciting doesn’t even begin to describe it._

_By Desmond Watkins_


	14. Pre-Game

Aomine didn’t notice him when he first walked in.  It was probably the suit: severe, black, well-tailored.

There had been a lot of suits like it everywhere to begin with and the number of them had only grown the deeper they’d gotten into the playoffs.  Even the photographers and the cameramen seemed to be showing up in dress shirts and ties now, changing from the more laid-back, open atmosphere of the regular season into something locked up tight, so that the flashbulbs going off were behind ropes and partitions, and Aomine’s interviews and pre-game talks were all coming at a set schedule.  He’d had to endure dozens of those talks so far, either in the hallway on the way into a different arena in a different city – Atlanta and Charlotte those had been, for five and six game series, respectively – or after each loss and each win while sitting at a podium, his mind already on the next match.

Saying Aomine didn’t like pre- and post-game interviews was an understatement: he hated them.  They were distracting, the questions were often stupid, unanswerable, or both – _“”Are you thinking about how you haven’t beaten your old high school rival since you were both students or is that all water under the bridge now?” “Yes.”_ – and he was contractually obligated to sit and respond to them.  The one time he’d tried to ditch them, after a Game 2 loss against the Hornets' unexpectedly blistering offense during the semifinals, Coach Paul had caught him at the door, looking up at him with steel in his eye.

_“You can eat the fine next year.  Get your ass in that chair.”_

So Aomine had put his ass in that chair, even if he didn’t want to talk to any more suits.  He didn’t want to talk to anyone at all.  Within the last nine months, all of his teammates had begun to recognize the change in their former rookie: the closer it got to game time, when the clock would tick down and the media would finally file out, and they’d start to suit up to after shoot-arounds and warm-ups in order to hit the hardwood for real, Aomine stopped paying attention to everyone and everything.

That was the case now, in the visitor’s locker room at the United Center as they suited up for Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals.  In twenty minutes, they would be facing the Chicago Bulls in a contest to decide which of their two teams would go to the NBA Finals.

In Aomine’s mind, there was only the game.  He ignored the goings-ons of his teammates, grunted through Alenko’s shoulder pats and punches, and nodded silently whenever Coach Paul came to speak to him where he sat, immovable, in front of his borrowed locker.  Why the hell should he have to give more to one more suit?

There was only the game.

There was only the figure in his head, immovable, and the wild, hot look he’d seen from across the court so many times before.

He did notice, though, when this particular suit sat down next to him, because none of them ever sat.  He noticed as well that he was an older man, older than his dad and, maybe, old enough to be his grandfather.  His hair was a steely gray, halfway on its way to white, and he was shorter than Aomine, almost as short as coach and nearly as fit as him, with the same severity, the same smart, sharp stare.  He didn’t slouch and he didn’t look tired at all, not in the way that many old guys seemed to be tired.

He also didn’t just start chatting the moment Aomine glanced at him.  He kept quiet, his eyes ahead, which let Aomine do the same.  He appreciated that.

For ten minutes, that was all it was.  He was able to go back to the game in his head, though it was interrupted now and then because there was no way he could miss the stares they were getting: Alenko pretending like he was casual, leaning over there against the opposite wall in just the right spot to watch them; there was Copeland, too, adjusting and then readjusting his shooting sleeve, peeling it off and then putting it back on again; and there, at the door to the locker room, was a media guy with a bushy Christmas beard, trying to look subtle as he fussed and fumbled excitedly with a camera.

Aomine looked again, back at the old man and his long stare, which he kept on the wall across from them, so hard and so sharp it was like he was trying to see through it, and under it, past the new paint and new lights.

When their eyes met, he felt a jolt of déjà vu, except he knew he’d never met this guy before.  He would remember if –

The old guy smiled.  Grinned, more like, a cocky, maybe-serious, maybe-joking kind of thing, and his laugh, just a small chuckle, was exactly like it.

“You fix that three-point shot of yours yet?  I saw you choke last year.”

Aomine bristled immediately. “Hey!  Dickhead.  You going to – ”

_“Oh my god.”_ That was Copeland, choking something out in his distinctive Southern twang.  Aomine ignored him.

“ – talk shit or ask shit?”

“Ask shit.”

“Fucking fine for you.”

Alenko was leaning way, way into his locker, which didn’t muffle his shocked sniggering.  Aomine ignored him, too.  His glare and his focus were all on the old man now, which didn’t seem to faze the asshole in the least.  He was casual as anything, running his hands down his pant legs and bracing them on his knees, looking at that spot on the wall again as if it was somehow more important than the scowling player next to him.  His anger peaked a little higher, seeing that, and he opened his mouth to tell him off, questions or no questions, contract or no contract –

“Is he your friend?”

And then he stopped, confusion scattering his annoyance.  He followed the guy’s gaze to the wall as if expecting a person to materialize out of thin air…only to realize, finally, that that was the direction of the other locker room, the home locker room.

Aomine closed his mouth.  It was a question he’d been asked before and continued to be asked as more tapes and articles from Japan were hunted up, translated, and distributed seemingly everywhere.  He’d even signed a Teikou jersey last week, though hell if he knew how they’d found one, and to be asked the same thing, again, right before a vitally important game, should’ve just made him angrier.

But the old man had asked it in a different way, with a different expression.  The sharpness of it cut through Aomine’s ire and his pride and though he leaned back, his arms behind his head, his feigned laziness was the same as the old man’s cutting smile: half-real, half-something else.

“Not my friend.”

Aomine closed his eyes.  Behind his lids, he saw it: the hot, wild look.

“My rival.”

It was the old man’s turn to look; Aomine felt it, rather than saw it.

“You going to go hard on him, or soft?”

Another question he’d been asked in the days leading to the ECF, except the media liked to spin it out, make it long and story-like: _does your history affect the level of play you bring against the Bulls?  You frequently visit one another; does being friends make a difference when you’re playing against one another?  After your Olympic victory together, is it harder to go back to being on opposite ends of the court?_

_You haven’t won against a team with Kagami in it since your first year of high school; do you think you can break that trend now, in the pros?_

“Going hard.”

He heard the laugh, short, smart, and then a rustle as the old man stood up.  Aomine opened his eyes back up to meet his, expecting it.

“Going fucking hard.”

He and the old man grinned at each other at the same time, in the same way.

 

* * *

 

**Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 1m

You won’t believe it, Pistons fans! _#ecf #nba #pistons #daikiaomine #history_

 

**Desmond_Watkins** _@ freep:sports_ • 1m

Isiah Thomas and Daiki Aomine **@DAIMINE** share a moment in the locker room! _#ecf #nba #pistons #champions #picture_


	15. Everything

_“Everything, Kagami.”_

Damn, damn it, _damn it,_ he wasn’t going to be fast enough, Aomine was just over an arm’s length ahead of him, and even if he jumped on him at the basket, he knew already that Aomine wasn’t going to dunk.  He’d keep the ball under his body until the last second, out of Kagami’s reach, because he knew, he _knew_ –

_“Give me everything you’ve got.”_

Kagami had chased Aomine from one end of the court to another, hot on the heels of his fast break after that insane steal off Powell.  The noise of the crowd followed him, a roaring tide at his back, and sweat pricked in his eyes, though he didn’t dare blink.  If he did, Aomine would be at the rim instantly, and that would be it, that would be the close of the third and the Pistons would be ahead.  He had to catch up to him, overtake him –

But there was no one as fast as Aomine.  It felt like there never would be.

Aomine got another step out of him, just… _ahead_ suddenly, as though time had leaped forward.  Kagami saw the set of his shoulders change, saw his hold on the ball change, holding it underhanded instead of over for another dribble.  _A layup._

Aomine could always earn himself another step, find that last bit of distance on the ground, but Kagami could do the same in the air.

He jumped.  He jumped over that last, extra step, filling the airspace on Aomine’s left side as though he’d been right on his back the whole time.  Aomine could switch hands, and would in order to shoot, except it would slow him that fraction of a second and let the rest of the defenders catch up.  This wasn’t high school anymore; he wasn’t just competing against one person at his level per team or against some ludicrous, themed defense or offense.  In a second’s time, Ivanov would be looming in on his right, Carlisle would be on the outside on Williams to cut off shots from the wing, and Powell would be on the Pistons’ slower point guard.  Kagami could see their center, Alenko, charging in to catch the rebound, but after the last three quarters, Kagami knew already that Alenko couldn’t jump as high as he could, despite being half a foot taller.

Aomine wouldn’t make this shot.  The Bulls would keep their lead into the fourth.

Kagami didn’t actually see Aomine smile.  In fact, Aomine probably didn’t smile at all, or change his expression in any way.  There wasn’t time.

It was just something he felt, something he _knew_.  He felt it like he felt Aomine watching him when the other was on the bench; he felt it when he was the one watching, and wishing he could somehow clone himself, so that he could both watch him and play against him at the same time.

_“You do that and I’ll give you everything back.”_

Aomine didn’t try for the layup.  He knew that it was already lost.  Instead, he lunged forward and let his feet leave the floor before he took a step out-of-bounds.  From the thrilled cheering in the crowd and the swearing from the Pistons bench, to everyone else it looked like he had fallen.

_Shit –_

Kagami knew, though.  He knew right away.  The awareness punched him in the gut, first full of anger and disappointment, because he should have stripped the ball from him before they got this far, he should have tried to be faster after all, and now they were going to lose their lead –

But that faded, in that moment.  He was watching again, not playing, but watching in pure awe as Aomine turned his body in mid-air, rolled the ball into his right hand, his stronger hand, and stretched out, nearly parallel to the floor, and threw the ball straight up in a sweeping swing of his arm that cleared the floor by a few scant centimeters.  He crashed to the hardwood in the next breath, his momentum sending him sliding into the cameramen sitting in the media boxes closer to the courtside seats, but no one was watching that.

The whole arena, like Kagami, was watching the ball.

He came down hard on his heels, nearly stumbled, but didn’t care.  His head was tilted back so he could see the ball as it went straight up and only at the very top of its spinning rise begin to curve.  The arc was tight, and narrowly missed the backboard as it came down on the other side of it.  The height ate up some of the power from the throw and it looked like it might hit the rim in a soft bounce, so close that Alenko was already on his way up to snatch the rebound if it rolled back out.

It didn’t.

It sank, neatly and cleanly, through the middle of the rim.

The packed-to-the-ceiling United Center erupted in a massive outpouring of shock and disbelief and, conversely, a scattering of astonished cheering, perhaps solely from the Pistons fans wedged somewhere in the middle of the sea of red and black and white.  The buzzer sounded, the quarter over, and the Pistons were up by 1, taking their first lead of the night.

“Fuck’n’ _shit_ , T.  I can’t believe it.”

A panting, sweat-soaked Carlisle walked up behind him – limping, Kagami saw, his chest tightening for reasons other than a shortness of breath – and put a hand on his shoulder, the same shock from the crowd on his face.

“That shit…he did it on purpose.”

Kagami nodded and pulled up the neck of his jersey to wipe at his face.  The tips of his fingers were shaking, buzzing with energy and adrenaline.  In his head, he saw it again, moving all in graceful slow motion:

The lunge.  The turn.  The low sweep of his arm.

It’d been beautiful.  If anyone or anything could be beautiful in a basketball game, it was Aomine and how he played.

“Yeah.  He wants to win.”

Aomine’s teammates had already moved to retrieve him, their big center hauling him up, and then hauling him in for a strong-armed hug that made Aomine bark and shove.

_“Get the fuck off, ass!”_

_“Fuck your face, you shit!”_

Kagami felt another pang, just a swift, hot fist over his heart, but not now.  Not here.  He caught the feeling, held on to it tight, and tucked it away.  There would be time; there would be afterward, whatever happened.  Right now, there was the game.  There was Carlisle, slapping his shoulder and marveling still, even as the two of them were called in by Coach Hammon for the huddle.  There was the score, their team one point behind, and there was the next game after this, and the next, and the next, where he would lead his team – _his team_ – as far as they could go.

…no.  Not that.

_“He wants to win.”_

_“Give me everything you’ve got.”_

He’d had a conversation with Kise before he’d left, when the budding TV star – except it was movies, now, wasn’t it?  His first feature film was coming out in the fall – had pulled him aside during his going-away party.  It’d been clear then that he and Aomine would end up on different teams based on their draft standings and the reality of no team wanting more than one foreign unknown on their roster.  In the end, they’d be here, like this, on opposite ends of the court, walking into different huddles, with different colors on their backs.

_“Kagamicchi, you have to, if you want to win.  You have to – ”_

Kagami took a deep breath and closed his eyes.  Behind them, he saw the smile that hadn’t happened and the slow, tight arc of the ball over the backboard.

_Everything._

_Right, Aomine?_

 

* * *

 

_ THE DETROIT PISTONS TAKE GAME 1 OF THE EASTERN CONFERENCE FINALS _

_In a stunning display of high-speed offense and precision ball movement, the Detroit Pistons triumphed against the Chicago Bulls Thursday night, with a final score of 114 – 112 in overtime --_

_\-- an astonishing behind-the-backboard shot, Daiki Aomine ended the night with the first triple-double of his career, with 32 points, 10 assists, and 10 steals, with Alenko recording yet another double-double for points and rebounds --_

_\-- Bulls ran out of steam at the end of the 3 rd and most of the 4th, but during his post-game interview, Bulls’ forward Taiga Kagami appeared to be anything but disappointed in the outcome._

_‘I’m ready for the next game,’ he said when asked about his struggling team’s loss.  So far in the postseason, the Bulls have switched fortunes with the Pistons from last year, laboring through a long, difficult postseason in a bid to retake their crown._

_However, it was with excitement, not exhaustion, that Kagami laid out his plans for the rest of the series._

_‘I’m giving them everything I’ve got.’_

_By Desmond Watkins_


	16. The Perfect Game

Sometime around the fourth game, Jackie had admitted to herself that she wasn’t here in any capacity other than as a fan.  She was a devout convert, a rabid obsessive, a shameless groupie – a _fan_ fan.

“Holy shit Des, holy shit, _holy shit - !_ ”

She was on her feet again, her hands in her hair, her eyes darting from the court to the scoreboard and back again.  Quadruple overtimes weren’t a thing in hockey.  There were scoring matches, yeah, sudden death-style game deciders that could, potentially, go on fucking forever, but this was somehow _worse_ because it stretched on, and on, and on, and on in a way that never let her rest for a second; she'd been hoarse and winded since halftime.  She felt as exhausted as the players on the court looked, each one dripping sweat, hunched over between desperate plays or slumped on the bench.  They must have gone through every bottle of Gatorade in a five mile area by now.

“The time…!!”

Des wasn’t jumping up and down.  He was waving his cane instead, somehow magically missing everyone around them, including his husband of ten years, David Dupree, who, like Jackie, was up and grabbing his hair and waving his Pistons cap above his head when he wasn’t doing that.  Everyone in the United Center was standing with them, though most of them cheered when she screeched or moaned when she clapped and yelled.  Whenever she looked up, it was just this _wave_ of humanity, mostly red and white but broken up by swaths of blue.  They groaned more or less as one in a cacophonous, monstrous sound as the Bulls’ backup shooting guard, Matt Jacoby, bricked a desperate three.  Alenko, with over fifty-five minutes of game time behind him, lost his grip on the defensive rebound.

The ball was knocked out of bounds.  The ref whistled and Jackie screamed again.  The Pistons were up by 1, keeping the narrow lead they had tenaciously clung to for all of the last three minutes after a high-speed, reverse layup from Aomine had put them ahead.

“I know, Jack!  Oh my gosh!”

Jackie couldn’t help a dizzy, half-panicked laugh: even during the last thirty seconds of play during Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals, Des  _still_ didn’t swear, not even a little.

“You are _such_ a - oh, god-!”

Ivanov had been the last one to touch the ball, sending it into the rows of cameras with a stray elbow.  It went to Daly, back off the bench after resting in the fourth, and he set up an inbounds pass to Williams to start the next play.  If they could eat up the clock, just somehow keep the ball out of the Bulls’ hands, then the game, and the series, and hopefully the Finals, would be theirs.

But Kagami was there.

He’d been _there_ the whole game.

He wasn’t quick enough to snatch the pass on its way across, but he knocked it out of Williams’ hands before the older player could lift it away from his full-power lunge.  It crashed into the floor, came back up, and would’ve landed in Kagami’s hands if not for Aomine steaking back into the backcourt to snatch it right out of his reaching palms.

 _A steal of a steal_ , her headlining mind crowed joyously, but then she was screaming again, clutching at her arms because if she didn’t, she would have to punched someone in the head.

Aomine had three on him, Kagami chief among them.  Their faces were inches apart during the fight for possession, each one so intensely _there_ that it took her breath away, but Aomine jumped and looked, for a moment, like he was going to shoot from the opposite field goal.  She heard Coach Paul howl something furiously obscene, but the fake shot turned into a _pass_ , a fucking full court pass to Alenko…!

“God _damn_ …!”

Everyone gasped, from the rafters all the way down to the players on the court and she had to be the only one looking at Kagami on the court because it felt like she was the only one that saw his eyes go wide with something like recognition, all shock and open-mouthed awe, but the human wave was moving and she couldn’t not look at where Alenko and Ivanov were clashing, again, endlessly, under the basket.

Ivanov was hard on his back, Alenko tried to turn, to slam down a dunk to increase the lead, but the Russian had inches on him and energy to spare, and a pass went out, back to Daly, who she swore looked a hundred years old in that moment.  He had turned thirty-seven this last year, more than ready to retire, and the clock was racing past him, ticking down, fifteen seconds, _less_ -

“Fuck FUCK oh my god!”

Kagami, again.  Kagami and Aomine.  Aomine was separated from his mark by a hard screen from Jacoby, only to roll past him, sprinting after him but _not catching him._ They’d sat Kagami during the start of the game, a risky move by Hammon that had put them behind before the half, but Aomine had gotten scant rest in comparison.  He was more tired.  Sweat flew from the tips of his fingers whenever he reached for the ball.

He couldn’t catch him.  He couldn’t catch Kagami.

Kagami, his eyes like bright razors, closed in on Daly.  Daly shot the ball off again, passing away from Kagami’s aggressive charge.  Williams had it, seemed poised for a shot, but there was Jacoby, his hands up in his face, the defense ludicrously tight as the clock continued its merciless countdown.  The ball went inside again, to Copeland, who staggered on the catch, almost dropping it, his hands and all the rest of him slick with sweat.

Jackie was going to have a heart attack.  _Des_ was going to have a heart attack; he was wheezing like a busted Hoover.  But…but if the clock wound down, they would win, there wouldn’t be enough time for –

_A steal of a steal of a steal._

When the ball slipped out of Copeland’s hands, just that scant little bit, Carlisle, off the bench for the eighth time that night after playing one or two minutes at a time, tops, raced, dove, and tapped it out of his grip.  He hit the ground afterward, sliding out of bounds after that limping, heroic sprint for the steal, but that was all they needed.

Kagami got the ball.

It all happened so fast, too fast to even really follow.  Only afterward would they really get to see it, slowed down to a comprehensible speed, when recordings from all angles would flood the broadcast, Youtube, and her Twitter feed for months and months.  They would see Kagami race back to their basket, never hesitating for a shaky shot.  They would see the tips of his shoes stop just on the free throw line.  They would see him use his forward momentum and that superhuman strength of his to kick off from the ground, betting on speed and power and the whole length of his body to fill the impossible distance between himself the basket.

For a moment, a second, a _breath_ , he was flying.

He was flying.  He would fly all the way to the rim, even though that was _impossible._

But then, in the blink of an eye, it was over.  The ball left his fingers.  The buzzer sounded.  Jackie, her thoughts wild with adrenaline and astonishment and misery and disbelief, could only think:

_He threw it.  He threw it down while jumping, how is that even a dunk?!_

Then the ball was clanging against the inside of the rim, spinning, rattling, and then _dropping_ down through the net.  Kagami crashed to the ground, and Aomine crashed right with him, at his back a microsecond too late.

The score went from _123 – 124_ to _125 – 124._

 

* * *

 

_ THE DETROIT PISTONS HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED FROM CHAMPIONSHIP CONTENTION _

_After seven brutal, historic games and a final match that went into quadruple overtime, the Detroit Pistons have ceded their Finals hopes to the Chicago Bulls, who will face in the San Antonio Spurs on June 4th --_

_\-- taken as the rebirth of a decades-old legacy, building on the long history shared between these two cities to create a new competition that can contend with the Finals themselves.  It speaks as well of the strength and presence of the game abroad, because as much as this particular rivalry is carved into the hardwood of two American arenas, it also has its roots an ocean away, on different courts, between different teams._

_What Taiga Kagami and Daiki Aomine represent is a world’s game and a world’s heart, cut out and put on the sleeve of two competitors who gave everything they had --_

_\-- afterward, during Coach Chris Paul’s postgame interview, the celebrated coach and former Clippers point guard was already looking ahead._

_‘Next year?’ he said, ‘It’s going to be this.  Just more of all of it --_

_\-- unbelievable utilization of team basketball, skill, grit, and heart on both sides.  The young superstar of each team came into his own last night, leading his respective team in scoring, assists, and steals in a show-stopping, career-making performance that is going to be the toast of every Bulls and Pistons highlight reel for years to come._

_Despite the loss, this reporter has only this to say:_

_It was the perfect game._

_By Desmond Watkins_


	17. MVP

“Do you have your speech?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you practice?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you ready?”

“Y…yeah.”

Alex smiled. “Uh-huh.”

Kagami swallowed, fidgeted for a second, and then hurriedly took another gulp of water on the table between them, counting but not reading the notecards in his hands.  Most of the leftovers of a celebratory lunch were either packed away, had been picked up by the catering company, or had disappeared into the maws of attending and since departed teammates, leaving just herself, Kagami, and a couple rows of nice cups filled with water and iced tea in Green Room 3, the prep area just off the main media rooms of the recently remodeled back-of-house at the United Center.  The Bulls, while never a poor team by any stretch of the imagination, were now kick-starting renovations that had previously been on five and ten-year timetables.  There were expansions in the works; the team training facility was going to be updated.  Even their website was getting an overhaul and the Bulls section of the NBA Store was going to be a bigger than before, come Christmas of this year.

They had Kagami to thank for that.  She knew it, the organization knew it, and the whole of the sports media knew it, though if asked, Kagami would still protest the whole idea.

But looking at him, even with his nerves and denials, he didn’t seem anywhere near as uncomfortable as the last time she’d seen him in a full suit.  That had been during the draft, when Chicago had selected him as the twelfth pick in the first round.  He’d filled into his height and into his frame since then and put on enough weight that nobody doubted his solid presence at the post.  His face had tightened up a lot as well and his jaw had gotten more prominent, but really, it was all a refinement of what had been there all along, the boy she’d known now grown into a man.

_Come on, Alexandra._

She let out a breath and smiled.  Kagami looked up from where he’d been flipping through his notecards.

_You promised yourself you wouldn’t be sappy._

“You’ll be okay, Taiga.”

She got up and moved around the table to lean against it beside his chair, her arms crossed.  She liked this better than being planted on the other side of the table like they were in some meeting.  Sure, maybe it was a sign that she was turning sentimental in her old age, but honestly!  Thirty-eight was _not_ that old.  She still had a lot of life and time in her.  She had a mind to ask him out onto the court before they left the arena; he'd pulled some crazy, and reckless, moves during the Finals.  A Meteor Jam, with Aomine on him and seconds on the clock?  It was an unstoppable dunk - in  _high school._ That he could pull it out here, that he could make it work...

She was in awe of it even now.  So was the rest of the world; the highlights from Game 7 of the ECF had over ten million hits.  It'd barely been a month.  She'd heard from Kat that he'd be shooting his first major commercial with the Jordan Brand in August.  There'd been industry rumors going around that there would be an alternative Jumpman logo rolling out, with just as many rumors saying that that was ludicrous and undeserved.

She wasn't so sure.  There was another championship banner hanging in the United Center now; Kagami had a second ring, and a second Finals MVP trophy, on the mantel of his fireplace.

But Kagami could tackle that later.  For now, they had this press event to deal with.  She reached forward and put a hand on his shoulder.  She noticed that, unlike the last time, the jacket was tailored to fit him.  It was a custom work, one he’d be taking home with him, instead of returning to a small rental place in New York.

“And you know you will be, right?  You wouldn’t have said yes if you weren’t ready.”

Surprise showed up on his face first, but after a moment his shoulders relaxed, just a small amount to begin with, but then, gradually, all the rest of the way.  He had that uniquely Kagami-ish look, the mix of embarrassment and yet a little pride showing in a slow grin.

As far as she was concerned, it was deserved.  Alex knew that he’d talked to his father, to Carlisle, to Coach Paul and the Bulls’ GM, and then to Kat Ibus, his agent and an old friend of hers from UCLA.  He’d done it all on his own and taken his time, even working past the end of the moratorium and a little into the free agency period.  She’d gotten a call herself one late afternoon, awkward but heartfelt, asking what his options would be if he got hurt, or if something changed unexpectedly.

After another week, she’d gotten another call.  She was proud herself, knowing that she’d been the first one he’d told that he was going to say yes.

Alex grinned back at him and leaned down – though not very far – to give him a peck on the top of his head. “That’s what I thought.”

“Thanks, Alex.”

She laughed again and waved her hand. “What for?  Eating all this free food?”

The last thing she needed was him getting sentimental, too.  He still had a speech to give!  The news was already over Twitter, but there was no way around these kinds of functions.  You had to put on a suit, make it official, and let the press ask their questions.  There’d be a lot of that, soon, more than ever.  When she thought about it, there might be precious little time for moments like this, alone with him and feeling like she was twenty again.  She could picture in her mind’s eye him and Himuro, rushing around the street court, clumsy but tireless, and while she didn’t want to think _it feels like only yesterday_ , she did anyway.

She’d wanted to not feel that pricking in the corner of her eyes or that tightness in her throat, but it was what it was.

She was happy, and more importantly, he was happy.

Even if she wanted this to last a little longer, if he was happy, that was all she needed.

“Here, let me see your speech,” she said, an impish look on her face, and expertly snatched the stack of notecards out of his hands. “Since you didn’t let me see before!”

“No, Alex - !”

The sudden panic on his face only made her laugh harder and she darted away and around the table before he could reach up to snatch them back.  She kept running, going in a tight circle as he galloped after her.  He’d probably catch her, his legs were way too long, but not before she got a good look at the speech she knew he’d been pouring over since last night.

“It’s fine!  You didn’t say anything _embarrassing,_ did you?”

“No!”

“Oh, so you did?”

“ _No!_ ”

Alex dropped down into the seat he’d been occupying, deftly dodging his grabbing hands, and flipped the stack over to look at the first card.

Her brows perked up.  After a second, his lips pressed together, hard, because it wouldn’t be nice to laugh about this.

When she spoke, her laughter bubbled up anyway. “Heh…heheh…Taiga.”

“What?”

She bit her lower lip and turned his cards around for him, holding them up so he could look right at them instead of just playing with them in his hands like he had been since the start of the party.  Written on the first card, in his strong if slightly sloppy handwriting:

_Dozen eggs_

_Butter_

_Pancake mix_

_Rice_

_Ground hamburger (x4)_

_Milk_

_Soy sauce_

_~~Condoms~~ _

_Lightbulbs_

“This is a grocery list.”

“WHAT.”

 

* * *

 

 **Desmond_Watkins** @ _freep:sports • 5m_

 **@chicagobulls** select Taiga Kagami as captain after retirement of teammate Caden Carlisle!   _#nba #bulls #rivals_

 

 **Desmond_Watkins** @ _freep:sports • 1d_

MVP Taiga Kagami has signed a five-year, $125 mil contract extension with  **@chicagobulls**! _#nba #bulls #rivals_


End file.
